[Please reply to me personally as well as to the list. I don't usually have the time to keep up with this list.]
Is there a way within Debian GNU/Linux i386 to make a VFAT file system on a hard disk partition? Background to the question: My laptop came with Windows 98. I repartitioned keeping the Windows 98 in /dev/hda1. I installed Debian GNU/Linux on /dev/hda3 with a swap partition on /dev/hda5 and /users on /dev/hda6. /dev/hda2 was reserved for Windows NT in case I wanted to use that at work. Eventually I decided to remove NT. I would now like to use /dev/hda2 as a second VFAT partition. I used cfdisk to reset the partition type to Win95 FAT32 (0B), which is the same type as /dev/hda1. When I started up Windows 98 it found that the "D" drive was not formatted and I agreed to have it format that drive. Then Win98 wanted to run Scandisk with the "thorough" option. I allowed that. It got about halfway through the partition according to its calculations then went into a tight loop. Apparently Scandisk was detecting every block as being corrupt and marking them as corrupt. I think it was Scandisk that had the problem not the disk itself. Next time I booted Linux there were all sorts of errors on /dev/hda6 of all places. Fortunately /dev/hda3 looks ok. Is there a mkfs.vfat or something like it within Debian that I can use to create the VFAT file system safely? My experience with Microsoft utilities is not encouraging. I would prefer to manipulate my file systems under Linux where I have some chance of understanding what is going on.
