Hi. I have two hds, hda and hdd. *hdd* contains linux. hda used to contain windows but I've since deleted it (or as much of it as it would let me delete). Now I want to re-format this drive but first I have a number of questions. If I want to use this as a linux data drive, presumably it should be formatted as ext3; how do I do this? More importantly, if I format the drive, will it also remove the flags (if that's the right term) and hence stop the computer from booting properly? If so, how do I replace them? When I run $ parted /dev/hda print, I get

Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-4103.920 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags
1 0.031 4097.460 primary fat32 boot, lba
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

Don't know if that is useful information but thought I'd include it, just in case.

Ian

you can use fdisk to format the drive. after that you can make a linux filesystem and then mount the drive as you like.

/etc/fstab is used to mount the partitions at boot time. so when you change the partitions you need to update it so that linux doesnt try to mount the partitions with the wrong info

Use cfdisk of fdisk to change hda's filesystem type from FAT32 to linux ext2. Then to format to ext2:
mke2fs /dev/hda
To convert to ext3
tune2fs -j /dev/hda

I would zero out the drive first as mkfs sometimes can leave Windows stuff that can do some strange things.

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

Check your typing before pressing enter!!!!!!!!!

Now, you have a clean drive full of zeros and you can partition/format as you wish.

Cheers eveyone for the suggestions. I would zero out the drive but I've already rammed it virtually full of data. Perhaps that amounts to the same thing??

Best, Ian