First off, I am a recent convert using SuSe 8.2. I don't miss windows at all...especially the way it would lock up.

Anyhoo, is there any other way to convert an NTFS drive to fat32 without putting it in another machine or installing windows? I have a similar situation as widowmaker...my linux was installed on my 20 gig, and I have an 80 that I use for storage, but can only read from this disk. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I see several newbies like me ask the question of using multiple hard drives and/or file systems with Linux.

It'd be nice if a guru or knowledgeable Linux person would give a short tutorial on how to achieve this.

I've seen several people write long but clear explanations on how to make things work and I was quite amazed how they could be. A lot of gurus I've known outside are anti-social nerds who answer your question with a "RTFM".

If anyone would be kind enough to post a short tutorial on this topic, it'd be more than welcome by many people here.

Not too sure how in depth I can go, or exactly what one would be after, but here goes:

mkfs is the generic tool that is used to build/change filesystems. To build a fat32 filesystem in linux you need dosfstools:
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/Linux/LOCAL/dosfstools/
(as a side note, most distros will have this already installed)

mkfs will then determine from your input:
mkfs -t vfat
That you want a vfat (fat32/16) partition (if fat32 use -F 32 flag). After that the rest is history. This normally isn't used for converting NTFS to fat, at least not in linux. Normally, that's not really an option, at least to my knowledge nothing 'linux' has come up with a tool to do that. At best I've seen Mandrake's diskdrake resize an NTFS paritition, which could then be used to backup the info to the newly created fat32, and finally remove the rest of the NTFS, resize it all back to a full Fat32 (but that's a bit more work than most are willing to put in).

Converting NTFS to Fat32, in linux, without losing data, and without backing up or resizing a partition, just doesn't seem to be a current reality, not publicly anyway (maybe private or commercial products exist for this?).

HTH

Cool

Thanks for your explanation, MasterC. I think currently people are more confused about making Linux recognize multiple hard drives... correct me if I'm misguided.

It'd be cool if you could give a short explanation on this.

Hmm, multiple hard drives, with multiple filesystems? Shouldn't be a problem...

fdisk -l (some distros require full path: /sbin/fdisk -l ) (FDISK -L lowercase)
to list all the recognized drives and their partitions. From there you can likely dig out which filesystem is on the partition from it's partition ID (the label at the end of the line in fdisk -l ). For example:
[code]root@masterc:/# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 16 heads, 16 sectors, 991 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 256 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 990 126703+ 6 FAT16

Disk /dev/hdg: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 148945 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdg1 * 1 59524 30000064+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdg2 59525 99207 20000232 83 Linux
/dev/hdg3 99208 138890 20000232 83 Linux
/dev/hdg4 138891 148945 5067720 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 522 4192933+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 523 4867 34895931 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 523 1355 6691041 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 1908 3279 11020527 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3280 4867 12750265+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 1356 1907 4433877 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2498 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 814 6538423+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 815 2499 13527796+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 815 1464 5221093+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 1852 2499 5198031 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hdb7 1465 1851 3108546 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
root@masterc:/#
[/quote]

Look at /dev/hdb6 It shows "Win95 FAT32" as it's partition ID. This is given to a partition during partition creation. You can view different id's by firing up fdisk:
/sbin/fdisk /dev/hdx
And then l (L lowercase) to list em. q to quit without saving (probably what you want to do ).

Ok, so in the example /dev/hdb6 we see FAT32, that should be sending off sirens all over saying 'vfat vfat vfat' So to mount that paritition at mount point /mnt/hdb6 I'd use:
mount -t vfat /dev/hdb6 /mnt/hdb6

And can access it freely. In all my examples above I don't have any NTFS ones to show (I don't have one on my box) but it will look something like:
/dev/hdb6 1852 2499 5198031 b HFS/NTFS

Which again, unless you are running a Mac (HFS) then the NTFS there should be sending off signals to the Pentagon 'NTFS NTFS NTFS', so mount it with:
mount -t ntfs /dev/hdb6 /mnt/hdb6

You will of course need the NTFS drivers, most distros come with them, but should yours not (Redhat anyone?):
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/
(or for Redhat specifically: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/redhat.html )

Older drives might have a Fat16 filesystem (as shown on my Sony Memory Stick /dev/sda1 above). Those can be mounted with vfat OR umsdos modules. All of these filesystems are part of the current kernel, so should you not have one, grab it and get compiling!

Any questions, feel free to post em up, I don't know where to stop

Cool