Search Members Help

» Welcome Guest
[ Log In :: Register ]

Mini-ITX Boards Sale, Fanless BareBones Mini-ITX, Bootable 1G DSL USBs, 533MHz Fanless PC <-- SALE $200 each!
Get The Official Damn Small Linux Book. DSL Market , Great VPS hosting provided by Tektonic
Pages: (3) </ [1] 2 3 >/

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

 reply to topic new topic new poll
Topic: Formatting HD after penboot, Format hard drive on a pedrive booted s< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
JohnH Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 46
Joined: Mar. 2006
Posted: Mar. 19 2006,14:05 QUOTE
I am trying to partition, format and use a hard drive on my pen drive booted system.

A search of "format AND hard drive" or "format AND hd" yeilds no results.

How should I proceed?
Back to top
Profile PM 
~thc Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 42
Joined: Dec. 2005
Posted: Mar. 19 2006,15:26 QUOTE
first you must know which device actually is your (first/only) harddisk.

most computers today should contain a parallel ata or 'compatible mode' serial ata harddisk - this will be accessible as '/dev/hda'. scsi harddisks or sata/ahci mode serial ata harddisks sould be accessible as '/dev/sda'. your pen drive will be accessible under '/dev/sda' in the former or '/dev/sdb' in the latter case.

second you need to know that the normal 'formatting' of a harddisk under windows means 'making a file system' under linux. i.e. if you decide to create a new 'ext3' filesystem on your first p-ata harddisk enter

'mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda'

in a root shell. 'ext2' and 'minix' filesystems are natively supported by dsl too. others may be available through dsl extensions.
Back to top
Profile PM 
JohnH Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 46
Joined: Mar. 2006
Posted: Mar. 19 2006,19:50 QUOTE
The drive I'm using is from another computer that has linux installed. It shows up as hda in Emelfm it has /hda1 and /hda3. I think the invisible swap partition is hda2.

What I would like to do is:

1. run the equivalent of dos fdisk command to re-partition the drive.

2. format the drive

or

just empty and reformat the existing partitions.
Back to top
Profile PM 
~thc Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 42
Joined: Dec. 2005
Posted: Mar. 20 2006,07:41 QUOTE
1. open a root shell
2. use 'fdisk /dev/hda' (text) or 'cfdisk /dev/hda' (menu) to repartition the drive and create one or more new partitions
3. make the desired filesystems i.e. 'mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda1' or 'mkswap /dev/hda3' or 'mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda5'
Back to top
Profile PM 
JohnH Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 46
Joined: Mar. 2006
Posted: Mar. 22 2006,11:41 QUOTE
Thanks ~thc
That's what I was looking for
Back to top
Profile PM 
12 replies since Mar. 19 2006,14:05 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Pages: (3) </ [1] 2 3 >/ 		reply to topic new topic new poll
Quick Reply: Formatting HD after penboot

Do you wish to enable your signature for this post?
Do you wish to enable emoticons for this post?
Track this topic
View All Emoticons
View iB Code