Format my usb ntfs drive for fat32 fendora compatibility?

[shawnrgr]

I managed to figure out how to set up fedora to read from my ntfs usb 200gig maxtor. This was a plus because I was able to copy all my backed up musi, movies and other important data to my laptop. I want to be able to freely read and write to my usb drive but fedora wont let me.

I would like to format the drive in fat32 instead of ntfs so that I can freely read and write to it from all users. I tried to format the drive under root but it told me I didn't have permissions. I tried to change permission of the drive but it told me it couldn't edit permissions. All i want is to format the drive. Can anyone help me out?

[Omega Blue]

use fdisk

1. Open a terminal
2. su -
3. fdisk /dev/hda (replace hda with your HDD) This will set the device to fat32
4. mkdosfs /dev/name

Make sure you have backed up all the stuff on there first.

[shawnrgr]

Wow. This is driving me crazy. The above disn't work. I Have a maxtor dimond max 10 200gig hd in an enclosure. Im using a Compaq Pesario R3000 Laptop so I can't install the hd in my comp. It is in the NTFS file system. I managed to install support to read the ntfs drive, I backed up all my files to my linux partition on my laptop. Now I want to format the usb drive to fat32 so I can read/write easily. I installed QTParted (Partition Magic Clone) I tried to format in fat32 and it said it completed successfully but it only took 2 seconds which does sound right. Then I tried to bring it up in linux but the USB drive will no longer show up under the "computer" icon on the desktop. But QTParted can still see the drive through usb so I know not all is lost.

I also tried booting to a windowsxp cd thinking I could use the format utility that kxp uses before an install but after I hit enter at "Press any key to boot from cd..." I got a back screen and the hd was constently being accessed but after a few minutes it never went any furthur.

What are my option!?!?!? Im in desperate need of some help here.

[scotta3234]

Hey I'm having the same problem here. I just want my external hard drive to be fat32 so i can read/write to it. Qparted is doing the same thing as you said. how should the two of us go about doing this? I already got everything else up and running so once this is out of the way i'll happily be using Fedora for good!

[shawnrgr]

use fdisk

1. Open a terminal
2. su -
3. fdisk /dev/hda (replace hda with your HDD) This will set the device to fat32
4. mkdosfs /dev/name

Make sure you have backed up all the stuff on there first.

That ended up working for me.

[scotta3234]

perhaps you could shed a little more light on this situation as i am having a horrible time with this.
here is my partition table. When i did mkdosfs /dev/sdb2 it only took like 2 seconds so im guessing something is wrong?
Disk /dev/sdb2: 157.9 GB, 157925376000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19200 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb2p1 1 19200 154223968+ 83 Linux

[root@localhost ~]# mkdosfs /dev/sdb2
mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)

[Omega Blue]

Run fdisk first. Make sure to set the partition type to fat32 (or maybe vfat, can't remember offhand). Write the info back out with the 'w' command. Then exit and run mkdosfs.

[scotta3234]

I solved my problem by simply formating my drive as fat32 under windows. I do not need more than 32 Gb of hard drive space between windows filesystem and linux as I am just going to format the rest as ext3 for any external storage i need for linux. Here is a link to my other post: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...d.php?t=106771

[Omega Blue]

Well, you could also run mkdosfs under Windows