On Monday 23 October 2006 14:45, jdd wrote: > I have an usb drive new with ntfs on it. > > if I plug it in, it's mounted. > > as so, I can't make a file system on it (disk mounted) and I > can't umount it (nothing relies on it, but umount think it's > used)
You should be able to umount it if you didn't access it in any way after inserting it (do not open "My Computer"). > what is the standard procedure to have mkfs.ext3 run on it? > may I use -F without risk (the drive is empty) I would try to destroy the NTFS filesystem first (even if it's mounted). As root: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdXY bs=1M count=10 ## replace sdXY with whatever your USB drive is and whatever partition you want to wipe. CAUTION: if you get this wrong you might erase something else. Or you can get more radical and erase the partition table on the drive dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1 Then reboot and recreate partitions on it with YaST Partitioner or whatever you know. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
