Format hardisk ?

thundersnows · 11-05-2003, 02:52 AM

Hi...
I just got a new hardisk and I want to format this drive. What's the command ?
I'm using cfdisk, and FS type is Linux. But I can't mount it.
I've tried to use Win95 FAT32, still can't mount it (mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb).
Can someone help me ? Thanks.

Bruce Hill · 11-05-2003, 03:15 AM

Minor technical questions, please. Where is the thing? Did you put it on the Primary IDE controller, or the Secondary IDE controller? Did you set the drive's jumper to Slave, Master, Cable Select? What have you done so far? Is it detected by your BIOS? What operating systems are you running on your computer?

Can you post the results of this, which you need to do as root? ->
fdisk -l (that's a lower case L)

You might have got the cart before the horse there.

aaa · 11-05-2003, 07:29 AM

You can 'format' in many different filesytems in Linux. You need to make a filesystem on a partition (format) before you can mount.

For ext2:
mke2fs /dev/<device>

For ext3:
mke2fs -j /dev/<device>

For FAT32:
mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/<device>

thundersnows · 11-05-2003, 07:33 PM

Thank you, that's what I need.