Re: Creating a vfat file system
On Sun, Mar 14, 1999 at 01:17:06PM -0600, Douglas Bates wrote:
> [Please reply to me personally as well as to the list. I don't
> usually have the time to keep up with this list.]
There is nothing special about VFAT filesystem.
You can just create regular FAT16 partition with
mkdosfs form dosfstools package.
I do not know if there is a way to create FAT32 from under Linux.
VFAT is just an extension to FAT that does not require any special formatting,
it's just the way directory entries are being created.
There is no connection between VFAT & FAT32.
I doubt however that the problem will go away.
Since Win98 has overwritten /dev/hda6, I suspect that this might be 1024 cyl
problem. At least Win95 will corrupt partitions when trying to write past
1024 cylinders. Does you BIOS set up for LBA? How many cylinders linux fdisk
is showing? If Win98 shows the number of cylinders - what is it?
Another reason may be if you did not erase the first sector of /dev/hda2
after repartitioning with linux fdisk
You should do "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda2 bs=512 count=1"
before MS format can work.
For further help be sure to post the printout of partitions from linux fdisk.
> Is there a way within Debian GNU/Linux i386 to make a VFAT file system
> on a hard disk partition?
>
> Background to the question: My laptop came with Windows 98. I
> repartitioned keeping the Windows 98 in /dev/hda1. I installed Debian
> GNU/Linux on /dev/hda3 with a swap partition on /dev/hda5 and /users
> on /dev/hda6. /dev/hda2 was reserved for Windows NT in case I wanted
> to use that at work. Eventually I decided to remove NT. I would now
> like to use /dev/hda2 as a second VFAT partition.
>
> I used cfdisk to reset the partition type to Win95 FAT32 (0B), which
> is the same type as /dev/hda1. When I started up Windows 98 it found
> that the "D" drive was not formatted and I agreed to have it format
> that drive. Then Win98 wanted to run Scandisk with the "thorough"
> option. I allowed that. It got about halfway through the partition
> according to its calculations then went into a tight loop. Apparently
> Scandisk was detecting every block as being corrupt and marking them
> as corrupt. I think it was Scandisk that had the problem not the disk
> itself.
>
> Next time I booted Linux there were all sorts of errors on /dev/hda6
> of all places. Fortunately /dev/hda3 looks ok.
>
> Is there a mkfs.vfat or something like it within Debian that I can use
> to create the VFAT file system safely? My experience with Microsoft
> utilities is not encouraging. I would prefer to manipulate my file
> systems under Linux where I have some chance of understanding what is
> going on.
>
>
> --
> Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
>
Reply to: