Creating vfat partitions with linux
 

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on how to create a vfat prtition in linux. Thanks

If you plan on shrinking an existing partition, then this is not for you. This tutorial assumes that you are starting out with either a fresh HD, or one that you plan on wiping the data from

Easy, (where have we seen this before?)


1) Login as root
2) open a term if necessary
3) run "fdisk /dev/hda" (we ARE talking about /dev/hda here, aren't we?)
4) hit "p" to show existing partitions.
5) hit "d" to delete these partitions (if any).

Now is a good time to reflect on things like DO I REALLY WANNA DO THIS?

Note: there is nothing that prevents you from deleting only the partitions that you don't want, or not deleting anything but just simply changing the partition type of the partition that you want changed to FAT32.

But, you HAVE to be sure of which partition you want to work with, making a mistake here will distroy the data on that partition regardless of it being the correct one or not.

So be careful.


If you deleted a partition or two, then you will want to create new one(s).

Note: there is no reason to delete a partition if the existing one is where you want it, and the size that you want. Just change the partition type in this case.

6) Hit "n" to create a new partition, follow the prompts.
7) Hit "t" to change the partition type (type "b" should do nicely)

DO THIS

8) Hit "p" to print out what you now have. Is this what you want? No changes will be made until you hit "w" If it isn't what you want, hit 'q' and regroup.


9) Are you sure? Yes? hit "w" if so...


Now run "mkdosfs -F32 /dev/hd??" or simply fire up Windows in Win4Lin and format it there ;)


John

Thanks for replying so quickly. I am planning on splitting an existing partition though, sorry I should have put that in my first message. Thanks

If you're using Mandy, then there's a utility called DiskDrake. It's a little more friendly looking than fdisk (its GUI), but is consequently a little less powerful. All is fairly self explanitory, but:

• Boot into your Linux.
  
  Type diskdrake (from the bash prompt).
  
  Up pops diskdrake. It should be displaying your primary harddrive.
  
  If it's a second (or third, etc) harddrive, then there should be a tab on the top-left, that will allow you to select '/dev/hd?'.
  
  It displays the partitions of the selected harddrive. Red for Linux, green for Linux swap, blue for Windows (has anyone else noticed the symbolism - RGB, with Windows as the last one).
  
  Er, as I said, most of it is fairly self explanitory.

Obviously, if you're not running Mandy, then you won't have this. RH has 'diskdruid', which is similar, and not sure of debian.

In that case, you can use either "parted" or "Partition Magic" (and probably others).

Here's parted:

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/parted.html

Be sure to backup first...


John

Thanks for all your help everyone I ended up using DiskDruid and everything went fine. Thanks again

Cool :)

I find partitioning easy if you just say to yourself "I was going to clean off this disk anyways"


John