Creating partions in Linux

[tazmius]

I have a 2nd hd I've installed in my Linux box (running a copy of Xandros 2.0). How to I create a partition on it with Linux? Also, as this drive is going to be used as a backup for my data, what would be the best format to partition with? ext2, ext2, reiserfs, etc??

Thanks in advance for any help.

Taz

 

[pitupepito2000]

tazmius, to create partitions in linux you can use either of these two commands cfdisk or fdisk. I personally like both of them, but if you are new to linux cfdisk is probably easier. Once you create linux partitions which are the slices in your hard drive . Then you have to choose a filesystem or format for you partition, I personally wouldn't go with anything that doesn't provide journaling. When it comes to filesystems I personally like ext3. But remember that a windows box, can't read ext3, so if you are going to use that partition to share and transfer files between windows and linux you will need to use fat32.

I hope this helps,
pitupepito

 

[pitupepito2000]

also I forgot a good place to read things about linux are the following sites:
the linux documentation project
goolge linux
vivisimo

I hope this helps,
pitupepito

 

[tazmius]

Thanks. I'll try that. Looks like I'l have to install it first though...tried running cfdisk at the CLI and got a an error but fdisk did run. I want to download cfdisk though and see how that goes....

I'll post later today with results....

Taz

 

[drag]

cfdisk does things "more correct" it's more then just a different interface then fdisk.

If you want a nice thing to do to a drive that is used but doesn't have anything you want to save before reformatting it is to do:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

or

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

(were hda is the drive you want to obliterate)

the zero command writes zeros to fill up the drive and urandom fills the drive up with random junk. (this is exactly the same thing you get when you do a so-called (and incorrectly called) low-level format utility you can get from the various harddrive manufactures.) That way you can be sure that their isn't going to be any suprises like some off-standard format or something that can cause issues. Plus it's a decent drive check because it writes to ALL the bits, so if the drive is damaged or anything it will choke on the bad sectors, it should only give a error when it reaches the end of the drive. It may take a LONG time, though on a big drive. If you have a 30gig drive then it will create a 30gig "file" to fill it up.