formatting of disk

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: formatting of disk
started by: colinbes

Posted by colinbes on June 16 2004,18:50

I am looking to format a partition for access in dos and linux

On the livecd I only see mkfs for ext2, ext3, minix, iso

I assume I need to download additional options - Have tried synaptic with no success.

Any suggestions?

Posted by cbagger01 on June 16 2004,21:54

Please don't interpret this as an insult, but after reaching this stumbling block, I would consider using a DOS/Win9x boot disk to do your formatting.

Create a bootable floppy disk via format /S A:

Then copy FDISK and FORMAT to the floppy disk. The files should be located in C:\DOS , C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM , or C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32.

Then boot up your floppy and use FDISK to create the partition and FORMAT to format it as FAT16 or FAT32 (If you have Win95OSR2 or WIN98 FAT32 is allowed).

I am sure that you can eventually get a vfat/dosfs format util up and running on your Linux system but for me I am too impatient so I go to plan "B" instead.

A Plan "C" option is to get a recent copy of KNOPPIX and boot from the CDROM.
After booting, open up an XTerminal and type in:

sudo su
passwd
(Enter a password for the 'root' account here)
exit
exit

Then choose QTParted from the KDE menu. Type in your recently created 'root' password when prompted. Then use the QTParted GUI to create your new partition and format it. You can even resize most existing partitions with very little trouble.

Good Luck.

Posted by colinbes on June 16 2004,22:03

Thanks, but unfortunately I always seem to choose the difficult path. I am needing to format just a single partition to be compatible with fat file system and this just so happens to be a CF card. When I inserted such a card on Windows machine it wanted to format the card, but formatted the first partition, not the 4th partition

Will most probably be easiest to hook up cf reader to my redhat (sorry DSL) or suse box and try from there.