Format USB HD

Tue Aug 5 13:41:48 UTC 2008

"It appears that Windows cannot accept any FAT32 with more than 32G"

I've got a USB drive divided up with a 120GB FAT32 partition and a
200GB XFS partition. Both windows and 'nix have no problem with the
FAT32 partition. Windows can use large FAT32 partitions (I wouldn't
recommend really big ones though, FAT32 doesn't perform well on
superhuge partitions), but it can't format them.

I find this article in particular interesting (win2k, but the same
limits apply to XP):
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=184006

"Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than
32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits),
but you cannot create one using the Format tool. This behavior is by
design. If you need to create a volume larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS
file system instead."

In other words, big FAT32 partitions work fine, but we'll not let you
make them so that you'll be forced to use NTFS (which at the time was
less "friendly" to other OS's... hmmmm).

Onward to NTFS...

As mentioned earlier, ntfs-3g is the best way to go. I think it may
request FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) support so hopefully your
kernel has that.
Useful packages (in my case on Debian/Ubuntu) are:
* ntfs-3g (mount rw NTFS partitions)
  http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
* ntfsprogs (format, check/repair, etc for NTFS partitions, also has a
mount utility via FUSE but ntfs-3g is a bit better here)
  http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=downloads

Hopefully I'm not going over what's already been said. I haven't had
time to do more than skim the previous posts.

 - Tyler

On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 2:06 PM, John Wildberger <wildberger-iRg7kjdsKiH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Christopher,
>
> Since my last post I did a bit more experimenting and also a little bit of
> reading. As it stands now I succeeded in splitting my 120G USB Drive into
> two partitions. One with 90G that I formatted with NTFS, and a second one
> with 30G that I formatted as FAT32.
> It appears that Windows cannot accept any FAT32 with more than 32G
> This worked out quite well, and so I did not follow your instruction with
> the "-F 32" option. But I wonder if it would have overcome the 32G
> limitation. It is too late for me to try this, because now that I have a
> working system I am loath to start over again just to prove a point.
> Thanks for your help,
>
> John
>
>
> -----Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> To: <tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2008 9:22 AM
> Subject: Re: [TLUG]: Format USB HD
>
>
>> On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 8:13 AM, John Wildberger <wildberger-iRg7kjdsKiH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> William,
>>> Thanks for your effort. I tried all the various suggestions, but no
>>> success.
>>> With fdisk  I can create a partition table that seemingly split my 120G
>>> USB
>>> drive into two FAT32 partitions. On closer examination it has only
>>> changed
>>> the ID but leaves the disk without any formatting.
>>
>> That's correct; fdisk does *one thing*, namely controlling partitions.
>> It does not establish the data format of the filesystems on those
>> partitions.
>>
>>> The problem of creating a FAT32 filesystem on this drive is still
>>> unresolved.
>>
>> You use mkfs.vfat to do that.
>>
>> Here's an online manual page for it...
>> http://linux.die.net/man/8/mkfs.vfat
>>
>> Note that you'd run it with "-F 32" to indicate creation of a FAT32
>> filesystem.
>>
>> Look for /sbin/mkfs.vfat
>>
>>> It also seems that the whole "mounting" technology is still stuck in the
>>> timeframe of the last century where DOS ruled with supremacy.
>>
>> I'd go along with the notion that *partitioning* is still stuck there;
>> the way we "slice" disks into partitions is generally still based on
>> the MS-DOS partitioning scheme (e.g. - 4 primary partitions, with
>> possible more logical partitions inside some of those).  (Aside: Note
>> that the BSD guys tend to use a different way of handling partitions
>> where they split disks into what are actually called "slices," which
>> give them a bit more flexibility than the DOS model offers.  Not that
>> this fundamentally matters if you only have a couple of partitions...)
>>
>> Of course, the way "mount" works dates back pretty much to the 1970s,
>> and it's not evident to me that the nature of the problems have
>> changed so much that there's anything broken about that.
>>
>> Arguably, it might be nice to have a mount command that is a bit more
>> intelligent about detecting filesystem types, though the need for that
>> is really an artifact of things like getting forced to use a
>> Windows-compatible format.
>> --
>> http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
>> "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
>> expecting different results." -- assortedly attributed to Albert
>> Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Rita Mae Brown, and Rudyard Kipling
>> --
>> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
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-- 
Tyler Aviss
Systems Support
LPIC/LPIC-2
(647) 302-0942
--
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