Hi all,
I've bought an external Hard disk (320 Gb, USB connection). My idea was to use it both with Linux and Windows. It was carrying NTFS partition, so I was not able to use it with Linux. I partitioned it with ext2 but then I wasn't able to use it with Windows. I used then mkfs.vfat but again Windows doesn't like it. I need a way to use it with both OSs because I have Windows where I work.

Is there any online HOWTO? I'm really a beginner... So I really need a step by step guide.

My Linux distro is SL 3. something, kernel is 2.4.something.

Any help will be appreciated!

Marco

Format it with FAT32 under Windows at work. Then Windows will like it and I'm sure linux will have no problem with it.

If you have XP, plug in the drive and if it isn't recognized, right click on My Computer --> Manage --> Storage --> Disk Management. You should be able to format the partition FAT32 from there.

Thank you for the reply. Unluckily there's no FAT32 option. Only NTFS... What do you suggest then? Many many thanks in advance... Marco

I think in XP if the drive id formatted in ntfs then windows does not allow it to be reformatted in fat32. The workaround is to use a XP installation CD to format it in FAT32
boot from CD and reach the point where the installer asks where to install OS, select your SATA drive & delete all partitions (of SATA drive! ), thereafter exit installer & format the disk from windows
OR
Use a Gparted liveCD

I was able in the end to format it woth FAT32 but I created 2 partitions (due to limits of FAT32).

I tried with linux again. This comes from |dmesg|:

hub.c: new USB device 00:1d.7-6, assigned address 2
usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0xd49/0x3200) is not claimed by any active driver.
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Vendor: Maxtor Model: 3200 Rev: 0344
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi disk sdb at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
SCSI device sdb: 625142448 512-byte hdwr sectors (320073 MB)
sdb: sdb1 < sdb5 sdb6 >
WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured
USB Mass Storage device found at 2
USB Mass Storage support registered.
inserting floppy driver for 2.4.21-37.EL
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 08:11.


and this when I try to mount it:

[bomben@g1-mb-44 ~]$ mount /mnt/edh
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
or too many mounted file systems
(aren't you trying to mount an extended partition,
instead of some logical partition inside?)

where (from /etc/fstab):

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/edh vfat noauto,user,noexec 0 0

How can I mount each partition?

Many thanks, Marco

BTW Microsoft only limits the max size of a FAT32 partition that XP and W2k can create to 32GB but no problems read or writing if a partition already exists that is larger then 32GB. From your last post sdb1 is an extended partition and can not be mounted. Your logical partitions and what you need to mount are sdb5 and sdb6.

In a nutshell an extended partition is a container for logical partitions. It is used so one can create more then 4 partitions on a drive. It goes back to the beginning when hard drives were first introduced for PCs one could only create 4 partitions. These are now called primary partitions. With the extended partition one can create up to 63 partitions (IDE only) on a single hard drive.