Re: initalizing HD

["nate" <debian-user@aphroland.org>]

Phil Beder said:
> if I re-partition an HD (with cfdisk),  what must I do to
>  initalize it before mounting?
>

you must create a filesystem on the disk(also known as formatting).
the defacto linux standard is ext2, it's usually the safest to use
if you don't know what alternatives are available(depends on kernel
and system support)

mke2fs /dev/XXXX where XXX is the partition of the disk to
format.

you may want to look into a journalling filesystem like ext3,
xfs, jfs, reiserfs lateron, but ext2 is a good place to start so
you know it works and stuff

nate