Arch Linux

fourreux

Member

Registered: 2008-03-12

Posts: 56

format external usb hdd with fat32

I got this anoying problem with an external usb drive. It's plugged and recognised by the os without problem.

I can't format it with fat32 though. what I tried was command line mkfs.vfat -F 32 -v /dev/sdc1 which ended in a process that wasn't responding any more. even kill -9 wouldn't work. The ultimat solution then was to reboot which wasn't possible! The only thing was that the broadcast message was sent and then nothing happened. so I did the press the button thingy ...

I suppose that there might be a hardware problem with the drive (as it fell down once). But it is still possible to format it with ext3 for example. and ntfs seems to work as well.

mkfs.vfat simply does not give any meaningful output. is there a log file I'm missing?

might there be some tools to check the disk? I tried mkfs -c but I canceled as this would have taken all day and night (I think) It's a 1TB drive ...

right now I'm trying with gparted. it seems to not respond as well. It's running for almost an hour now ...

thanx anyway

perbh

Member

From: Republic of Texas

Registered: 2005-03-04

Posts: 765

Re: format external usb hdd with fat32

oooops - I certainly would _not ever_ put FAT on a 1TB drive!!
You can use fdisk to change the partition type (so it's 0x83 instead of 0xc) and then format it to ext3/ext4/reiserfs/xfs/jfs or whatever you want to use.

fourreux

Member

Registered: 2008-03-12

Posts: 56

Re: format external usb hdd with fat32

ok. thought that was ok as max partition size is indicated as 8TB for fat32.

but if i want to use it cross-platform wise, I just can't format it with ext. ntfs as well isn't very nice (mainly it willl be used on windows though).

would it be ok to repartition the drive into smaller parts? what would you suggest as max size of such partitions in order to format it with fat? Or is there another format available for use with multiple oss?

fsckd

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-06-15

Posts: 4,173

Re: format external usb hdd with fat32

ntfs-3g isn't that bad. The main problem is Microsoft doesn't want interoperability. It's left to the general populace to build and maintain drivers.

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fourreux

Member

Registered: 2008-03-12

Posts: 56

Re: format external usb hdd with fat32

what about damaging the drive?
As I said I tried to do mkfs.vfat. It started and then it suddenly stopped. I guess what happned was that the disk suddenly "parked". I mean it made that noise a hard drive makes when it shuts down.

I could always access it again and format it with ext3 and with ntfs again. on ntfs a run the check function with gparted and it said all was fine. with ntfs-3g I could mount it and write to it, but all of a sudden it did that "parking" noise again and simply stopped.

I will check with smartmontools and badblocks tomorrow. but the question is could the attempt to format it witch fat32 harm the drive in any way?