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speedyd
n00b
Joined: 18 Sep 2002
Posts: 1
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 Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 2:33 am Post subject: formatting FAT32 within gentoo |
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i have a 12gb partition which has been fdisk'ed to be a fat32 partition, but i cant mount it due to the fact that it isnt formatted (i assume).
how do i do this within gentoo?
Cheers,
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pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20067
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| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 2:47 am Post subject: |
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| man mkfs wrote: | -t fstype
Specifies the type of file system to be built. If
not specified, the default file system type (cur-
rently ext2) is used. |
man also suggests "SEE ALSO mkfs.vfat(8)", though I don't have that option installed.
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Naan Yaar
Bodhisattva
Joined: 27 Jun 2002
Posts: 1549
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| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 3:05 am Post subject: |
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| In addition to what kanuslupus says, you need to emerge dosfstools. Then you can use mkdosfs, mfks.vfat or "mkfs -t vfat" to create your FAT filesystem. All 3 commands are equivalent. |
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Chickpea
l33t
Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 846
Location: Vancouver WA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 3:15 am Post subject: |
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Out of curiosity, why are you wanting to format a fat32 partition in Linux? and why do you want to mount it? did you fdisk using Windows' fdisk utility or Linuxs' fdisk utility?
Inquiring minds want to know.
C |
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Freak_NL
Apprentice
Joined: 27 Jun 2002
Posts: 261
Location: The Netherlands
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| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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For FAT32, you need to add another flag, I believe -F 32, but you'll have to verify that. Without it mkfs.vfat will default to FAT16. 
vfat is unfortunatly the only R/W filesystem (R/W as in, read, write and no DANGEROUS (NTFS) markings in the kernel) that allows for Windows and Linux to share a partition. My system-partitions are XFS (NTFS for Windows), but the larger (120 Gb) drives are vfat, because most OS's can reach them and because mp3's and avi's don't care about userrights and some efficiency gains.
I need Windows for scanning ok.. (and some games) |
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yokem55
Guru
Joined: 18 Apr 2002
Posts: 360
Location: Oregon
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| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Does WinXP not allow you to format in fat32 anymore and simply just pushes ntfs? |
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Freak_NL
Apprentice
Joined: 27 Jun 2002
Posts: 261
Location: The Netherlands
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| Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2002 9:02 am Post subject: |
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| No, FAT32 is still optional, but since I don't require write access to a Windows system partition NTFS is fine. Read access is no problem. |
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kybber
Apprentice
Joined: 25 Jun 2002
Posts: 228
Location: Trondheim, Norway
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| Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2002 9:27 am Post subject: |
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I think Chickpea's question basically boils down to this: If you have a FAT32 because you want to access it from both windows and linux, then apparently you have windows installed. So why not use windows to format the drive instead of hassling with doing this one-time operation in linux? At least this is what puzzles me...  |
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Snackiz
n00b
Joined: 17 Apr 2003
Posts: 17
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2003 10:43 am Post subject: |
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Windows XP has a maximum of 32GB for creating FAT32 partitions.
But I want to create my whole disk (60GB) as a FAT32.
Maybe a Win98 boot disk might help?
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Fitzsimmons
Guru
Joined: 01 Jan 2003
Posts: 415
Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2003 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Snackiz wrote: | Windows XP has a maximum of 32GB for creating FAT32 partitions.
But I want to create my whole disk (60GB) as a FAT32.
Maybe a Win98 boot disk might help? |
Ouch. You will kill that disk by formatting it in fat32. fat32 is a very poor filesystem, and although I can't give you the details, it will turn out that on a HD that big, the size of your files will be drastically increased in size because of the inefficiency of fat32. If you are going to format with fat32, at least partition it down (IIRC, 4GB is the optimal). I know this totally sucks, but blame microsoft. However, I know for certain that there are tools for windows that allow it to mount ext2/3. Truthfully, I don't know much about the efficiency of ext2, but I am almost certain that it is better than fat32 for large drives. Try googling about it. In any case, here is an article for mounting ext2 in windows. Good Luck. |
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