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#1 2010-05-03 11:00:46

pojo87
Member
Registered: 2010-04-29
Posts: 20

[SOLVED] Formatting or making usb external harddrive deletable

Hey guys,
My external hd won't let me format it or delete files so i can move another distro on there to dual boot.
I've looked everywere including the wiki and found nothing.
I've tried formatting it with cfdisk but it just contains the same files after.
please help sad

Last edited by pojo87 (2010-05-03 11:26:43)

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#2 2010-05-03 11:11:23

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: [SOLVED] Formatting or making usb external harddrive deletable

cfdisk creates/amends the partition table - it has nothing to do with the filesystem. Once you have decided which filesystem you want to use, mkfs.foo will create a new filesystem, overwriting whatever is there at the moment - e.g. mkfs.ext4 for ext4 etc.

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#3 2010-05-03 11:11:28

mikesd
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-02-01
Posts: 788
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Formatting or making usb external harddrive deletable

cfdisk does not format a disk, it partitions it. You probably wan't one of the mkfs.* variants. These will create a new files system wiping out any existing file system. Make sure it is unmounted first.

NOTE: This will delete all data from the partition. Double check your command line before you hit enter. smile

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#4 2010-05-03 11:13:38

pojo87
Member
Registered: 2010-04-29
Posts: 20

Re: [SOLVED] Formatting or making usb external harddrive deletable

ah im going to try this now thanks for the quick response.
I'll post what happens.
Cheers big_smile

Last edited by pojo87 (2010-05-03 11:15:11)

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#5 2010-05-03 11:24:30

pojo87
Member
Registered: 2010-04-29
Posts: 20

Re: [SOLVED] Formatting or making usb external harddrive deletable

That worked perfect thank you guys so much big_smile
people say arch users are usually assholes to newbies but gotta say this forums helped me more then any other distro's forums that i've used.
Double cheers.

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