On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 02:36:24AM -0800, Ibrahim Mubarak wrote: > You might be right. I just tried to use an old 40 GB drive and format > it using windows, but I had no choice in the fs type. The only option > is NTFS, but I want it as FAT32. All this to be able to make a backup! I would expect that it is possible to choose FAT32 as file system. I remember having faced this problem some years ago. I remember that in the end I solved it. I don't remember how though. ;-) I may have even just solved it exactly the way you are trying to solve it now: with Linux. Maybe there is a simple tool somewhere on the net to do this. Or you could try going to the Windows command prompt and do a manual format there. The FAT32 option may not be available in the GUI---where it would just scare the poor, hapless users ;-)---but it could be there in the command line tool. > But now I am trying to format the disk under linux using mkdosfs. When > I format it using "mkdosfs -I -v -F 32 -f 1 /dev/hdb" the size of the > disk is limited to 1 GB. What can I do to make it take all 40 of them > GBs? /dev/hdb is the whole disk. You need to run mkdosfs on a partition, like /dev/hdb1. If needed you can create a partition with cfdisk. Okay, I just read in the man file for mkdosfs that the '-I' option is supposed to work around that and allows you to format a complete disk. So apparently the way you do it is possible, but I don't think it is recommended. At least I don't recommend it. :) So I suggest making a partition with 'cfdisk /dev/hdb'. Just let it take the whole space and see if that works. But like Daniel just wrote, there is a limit on the file system size. It should be more than 1 GB though, even with Linux tools. -- Maurits van Rees | http://maurits.vanrees.org/ [Dutch/Nederlands] Public GnuPG key: keyserver.net ID 0x1735C5C2 "Let your advance worrying become advance thinking and planning." - Winston Churchill
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