I want to know if what i did is wrong.

i used cfdisk to make a FAT32 partition, type "0C"

then i made sure i used the "write" command, and quits afterward

Then i used "mkfs.vfat -I -F 32 /dev/sda" to Format the drive into FAT32(At least that is what i think im doing)


but after that, when i used "cfdisk /dev/sda" to check the partition table, it said that all i got is "Free Space", my partition table is gone.


Is this how its supposed to be?
Windox XP cannot detect my partition~
am i missing any step?




im using Knoppix and "qtparted" did work for me.
I just wanna learn how to use the command line

Thankyou

yous problem originates with the linux drive naming conventions. /dev/hda is your whole HDD. When you create a partition this partition is named /dev/hda1 so when you try to creat a file system you should specify which partition to format instead of giving the name of the HDD.

Primary partitions are numbered 1-4, extended partitions 5-whatever.

you already are aware that you created a partition inside /dev/sda, so why did you then think you should format the block device as a whole? you format partitions, not physical disks... "mkfs /dev/sda1" etc..

fixed + thank you!