On Thursday 17 March 2005 11:41, Anne Wilson wrote:
On Thursday 17 Mar 2005 10:12, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
Kaj, if you have a windows boot disk, use fdisk to completely remove the partition, then let MCC deal with it. I've never used the linux fdisk, but I would have thought you could do the same with that.
Anne
Thanks, Anne. But..eh.. I don't have Windows disk, and even if I had, how could I get in into the external drive ?
Ah - I missed that it was an external drive - sorry about that. I've never used an external drive, but I would think that you
could only do that if the bios recognised the external drive - I
understand that some do.
The linux fdisk utility won't let me do anything on the drive.
Is the drive seen at all? I would have thought that if the drive is recognised it should be possible to remove the partition as long as it's unmounted?
Anne
The drive is seen OK, but trying to format it with a real file system is a no go. I'm wondering if someone wrote a defragger for linux to use on a FAT32 partition ? - It's my impression that many here have such a partition for their Windows stuff. I'll google around some. No major problem though, just my perfectionism....
Kaj Haulrich.
Kaj; I think Anne has the right idea. I have several clients using external USB drives instead of other types of backup drives/media. Many of them came partitioned and pre-formatted as FAT32, but Diskdrake made fast work of it.
One thing you should consider though, is that it helps sometimes to delete the mount-point folder right after you unmount the drive and before you attempt to delete the FAT32 partition.
Your problem may have something to do with that. If not, then this will make sure that drive access and permissions are updated at the least.
If necessary, go to the harddrive manufacturer's website and download their diagnostics tools. Some like Maxtor have a bootable ISO image you can download and use to reformat the drive back to factory standards.
Others have the same type of tools which can be run from a bootable floppy diskette.
Worst-case, you can remove the hard drive from it's USB case and temporarily connect it as a slave drive on your Linux box. Once Diskdrake sees the drive you can proceed normally and delete and create new partitions and re-format the drive the way you prefer.
Your problem might also be that the circuitry in the USB box itself may have either a hardware or software 'Lock' system. Check your owners manual for the USB box to see if it does. Once more possibility is that the controller chip in the USB case does not support Linux, but I find that highly unlikely.
IN all cases, you'll have to unmount the drive from diskdrake to begin the process, so keep that in mind.
-- Mr. Geek Registered Linux User #190712
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