Format 250gig HDD in Linux

I have a 250gig hard drive (NOT the one Linux is on) and I need to format it to FAT32. The Windows XP disc will not format a drive this large in FAT32. How do I do it in Linux? Using Fedora Core 3 64, but command line is okay provided you give me exactness...

Please respond soon as I am using a friend's computer to back up the files that used to be on this drive and he needs to use it too.

EDIT and why does everyone mount hard drives in /mnt? I prefer elsewhere, but does that change anything (except the location), like any disadvantages?

I THINK I just formatted it, all looks good, except only root can write to the drive. I'm sure it has something to do with fstab. Here is mine:

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sda6         swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hdd1               /drives/caviar          vfat    rw,defaults,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/sda1               /drives/windows         ntfs    ro,defaults,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/hdb                /media/cdrecorder       auto    pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hda                /media/cdrom            auto    pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

Now, for hdd1 and sda1 I have no idea what any of the values in the last column are, chances are they are wrong or something. And do the drives need to (should be) mounted in /mnt? I prefer /drives, but that is just me. More importantly though is getting permission to write to the hdd1!

You need to add user in the options bit where some have "defaults" in that row. Just add ",user" to it.

REPLACE 'defaults' with 'user', or insert user after defaults? also, do i need the ro/rw stuff and all the extras on that line?

FINALLY BACK IN WINDOWS!!!
But the 250gig drive I formatted to FAT32 does not appear in the drive list. What do I do? I really need to get my stuff off someone else's computer.

Note: no longer in emergency status.

Leave defaults there just add user. ro=read only rw=read/write.

To format any drives under linux, I use a GUI application called QTparted. Try it out.

yum install qtparted

That should get it for you.

-Sloik

thats ALL you type? i have no idea what one would normally do after it is installed.
is there some advantage of this to just doing the mkfs thing? should windows read it? oh well ill play around with it later

After it's installed just type

qtparted

And it should run.

-Sloik

However yum is Fedora specific and does not exist in other distros For QTparted you'll also need QT libraries installed. There is also a commandline version of parted, but I imagine that the QT version is easier to use. Maybe Windows just cannot deal with FAT partitions that are that large? You could try splitting the drive to smaller partitions (with parted, fdisk or cfdisk) and see if they work under Windows.

To be precise, subdirectories under /mnt is a wrong (though common) place to mount filesystems. Your way seems closer to the right way. You should have no problems using different mountpoints.

How do you make them appear in 'computer'
(and how do i get the one OFF the desktop?)

That would depend on the desktop environment you are using.

GNOME
i try to unmount it under teh right click menu but it wont
is there like a command to unmount all HDDs
because ive been experimenting too much and its all just a huge mess

and again how do you get the little icon of the hard drive in the 'computers' screen, because they just popped up all the sudden

If I read your fstab correctly, /dev/hdd1 is the 250G?
then in a console or (x)terminal, type:

umount /dev/hdd1

OR

umount /drives/caviar

The first one will un-mount it from --wherever-- it was mounted.

And while I don't actually **know**, I suspect that F32 is actually limited to 64G (Binary!, which is larger than 64,000,000,000 the manufacturers now use), so you may need 4 partitions.

If you will never need to put another partition on this drive, they can all be primary, which gives a tiny speedup, but is also MUCH easier to recover if Capt. Murphy strikes.

I think the others here are doing good aside from this possibility.

OH! -- Tip:
you can put a #comment beside each entry, before or after, just be consistent. Or a block KEPT UPDATED AND IN ORDER. (Sorry yelling, but...)

lol,