Does DSL Have A Format HD Option?

Novatian · 05-13-2008, 08:47 AM

Does Damn Small Linux, like Knoppix, have an option to format the hard drive?

If so, how is it done?

indienick · 05-13-2008, 09:30 AM

If you're looking for a graphical tool, there probably isn't one, unless DSL comes with gparted or qtparted; DSL does come with parted which is much like cfdisk - it's just a partition editor.

To format a harddrive, just use parted or cfdisk, to modify the partitions, then depending on the filesystem you want (let's use the Linux-standard ext2 and ext3 filesystems), use the corresponding command and the terminal:

Code:

For an ext2 (non-journaling) filesystem
# mke2fs /dev/partition

For an ext3 (journaling) filesystem
# mke2fs -j -O dir_index /dev/parition

Just a reminder, if it's a SCSI (SATA or USB) drive, the PARTITION bit should read as "sd{a,b,c}{1,2,3,..,9}". Whereas IDE drives would read ""hd{a,b,c}{1,2,3,..,9}".

MS3FGX · 05-13-2008, 09:32 AM

I don't know if there is some GUI tool to format drives (which I assume is what you are referring too) but you can certainly format a drive from any Linux distribution using the command line tools. Though DSL doesn't include as many FS tools as more robust distributions, so your available FS choices would be limited.

In fact, looking at the packages that ship with DSL, the only filesystem tools that appear to be included are for EXT2.