To start with...I want to thank everyone who has helped up to this point with my migration to Linux and away from depending so much on M$. I am really hooked on Debian now!!

A new question.

I have changed over a W2k server to a Debian file server. I setup the OS and swap file on the 1st drive (4G). I have 3 other NTFS drives on the system that contain data from the W2k server. I want this data & plan on using it for my Linux/Windows network. I realize I need to change the NTFS to something else and that is where my question comes in.

1. What FS should I use, that can be read/write from both Linux & Windows, DOS, Fat32, Ext2, or Ext3?
2. How do I partition/format these drives? Within Linux or can I use a boot up disk, something like with DOS fdisk?

Thanks
Wayne

I presume by "read by" windows you mean be accessible on the network, and not a dual boot system? In that case the FS you are using will be of little importance, as Samba will be able to abstract the files from the physical methods used.... use the best filesystem for the server, ie. ext3, reiserfs, jfs, xfs... your choice, but make sure it's a moden linux filesystem. to partition, use fdisk or cfdisk under linux. not too sure what the best plan of action would be to transfer the data though... if possible get it onto a netowrks windows machine and copy them back on debian. I'd say it's not worth the risk of mounting ntfs under linux if the data is valuable.

For Q2, you might want to look into the QTParted tool. There is also more than you ever needed to know in the HOWTO - and yes, there is an 'fdisk' in Linux - in fact there are three (fdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk)!

Linky:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/formating.html

For Q1, are you actually dual booting on the server or are you going to set up a network file system? If the former, ext2 is a good bet for read/write from Windows, otherwise go ext3 for the journalling, or Reiser/XFS/JFS/take your pick. You could use FAT32 but do you really want restricted file names, no permissions and disk fragmentation problems?

TIM

No, its not a dual boot.
Also, I tried cfdisk but only saw hda. I could not see hdb, hdc or hdd. May I just didn't know where to look.
I think I will go with ext3.
What about formatting the drive? When does that happen?
One last thing, from what I think I've learned, I will need NFS and Samba both so Linux and Windows clients can access the data, right?

acid_kewpie

I have a plan of attack on the data. I freed up one of the other three drives before I blew away W2k just for the purpose of moving the data around and re-partitioning the drives.


avarus
I will check out the QTParted tool and thanks for the site, good info.

Thanks guys
Wayne