I want to run a version of linux off of my external drive but everytime i load disc it says no formatted partition on the drive and i am unable to use the disc to format the drive. what format does my external drive need to be in to put linux on it? any help would be really good thanks

What operating system are you trying to use to mount this unformatted disc?

If you are using Linux then when you load the disk tell automount that you do not want to mount this disc and to leave it unmounted. You can then partition the unmounted disc using fdisk or parted.

If you are using Windows then I suggest that you don't bother with Windows. You can partition and format the external disc using the Linux installer. Plug the external disc in and then boot your Linux install CD. The installer should find all of your devices which are plugged in and turned on. Then you can use the installer to partition the external drive, format the partitions, and install Linux to the newly formatted partitions.

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Steve Stites

P.S. If you have further questions please tell us what distribution of Linux you want to install. Install procedures vary somewhat among distributions.

What disc are you talking about when you say you can't use the disc to format the drive?

Linux will install on many filesystems, but 'ext2' and 'ext3' are perhaps the most commonly used on personal computers. You cannot use a filesystem like FAT32 or NTFS because the file permissions are not supported properly and many install scripts will refuse to install because the permissions cannot be set.