Hi

I recently purchased a Western Digital 1.5TO drive, and want to format it to EXT3. I have tried everything including downloading the Linux start up program, but this unfortunately resulted in my wiping the PC startup....a very expensive and painful experience.

I now appreciate that I need a seperate PC formatted to Linux.

Western Digital were no help when I asked them if I could format their drive in EXT3 and only suggested that it might be possible, but they could'nt help or advise!!!

Since I don't have a seperate PC formatted in Linux, I am wondering if anyone could help me to get it formatted. I did take the drive to my local computer shop, but they eventually said that they "could'nt see the drive" when trying to format in EXT3 !

I would really appreciate any help and advise to resolve this problem.

Thanks.........Paul

Welcome to LinuxQuestions. It would help to know something about the drive like...
What is the model number of the drive?
Is it a desktop or external? IDE, SATA, USB?

You can achieve this with the GParted Live CD.

How to format a drive to Ext2/Ext3 from a Mac (or Windows)

Gnome Partition Editor

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

You could use a LiveCD from 'The LiveCD List' to boot the machine then configure and format the drive. If you plan on using the drive for multiple systems then partition the drive for your needs.Then format the partitions with the filesystem of choice.

Just a few more links to aid you;
Linux Documentation Project
Rute Tutorial & Exposition
Linux Command Guide
Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide
LinuxSelfHelp
Getting Started with Linux
Bash Reference Manual
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
Linux Home Networking
Virtualiation- Top 10

The above links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

my advice would be to see if you can write a custom partition table via say fdisk and use mkfs.ext3 to format it... this is fairly low level terminal stuff mind you. It could be that as some western digital devices use special firmware to detect things like disk usage it might not be possible...

If you don't have a Linux PC, then why on earth would you want to format your drive in ext3 (ext3 is useless to just about any OS except Linux)?

If this is because you want to install Linux on it, then don't format it beforehand because the installer will format it for you.

Good question.

I am fairly sure eyraud means another (IE a secondary/spare) PC when then word "separate" is used

Hi,

I agree that there is some confusion about the problem the OP has presented. 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way' would be one link the OP should look at to help us to help him/her in the future.

Hi again and thanks for your interest and responses

My Western Digital HD is an external USB 1.5 TB/To Hard Drive.

I have a Humax Foxsat TV receiver/recorder which is nearly 100% full of wonderful documentaries that I don't want to delete, so I purchased the WD external HD to transfer and save these programmes. They can only be transfered and saved in the Linux EXT3 format.

Hope this info is helpful.

Many thanks for your help................Paul

I do not understand this. And why?
You can use partedMagic live cd to format your external drive to ext3 in case you actually want to.
And you will also need ext3 drivers installed if you want to access the ext3 formatted drive from windows.

linuxlover.chaitanya summed it all up nicely.

The OP might have made some assumptions that are not correct. The first thing to note is that Windows cannot see ext2/3 partitions unless you install some special drivers for that purpose (google is your friend). So, handling that disk under Windows might be a problem, even if you manage to format it.

Secondly, I really *really* doubt that your video player can only read ext3, because fat and ntfs are the most commonly used fs formats when it comes to home media player. It's not impossible that it only supports ext3, though, but it would be very strange.

You don't need a linux OS installed to format the disk as ext3. There might be tools that can do this from windows, not sure. But in any case, just download a partedmagic livecd, boot it, and use it to format whatever disk you want. Double check first that you pick the right disk, otherwise you might format a disk containing valuable info.

The Humax system will record on Fat32, but because of its 4GB limitation it's no good for High Deffination or 60 minute plus programmes. The Humax system will only recognise EXT3 which has no limitations or FAT32 (This was confirmed by the tech dept at Humax)

I previously downloaded the Linux startup program to disc, but then realised that I'd wiped my normal PC startup which I could'nt recover, so I'm concerned not to do this again. (Linux worked ok, but could'nt see my WD external drive)!

Can I use partedMagic live cd without effecting the normal startup and how do I do this, and where do I get the special drivers to install EXT3 ?

Thanks again for all your support............Paul

Ok, that makes sense indeed. Then ext3 is the only option.

As said, formatting the drive shouldn't be a problem, you can do that from a LiveCd or DVD, but you will need to choose one of the existing drivers to access the volume from Windows, so you can deploy the films into the drive and manage your collection.

Or, alternatively, you could either migrate to Linux or just dual boot. Both OSes can co-exist in the same box without big problems.

And even that is not going to work for you, look at VirtualBOX. Its free and you can virtualize Linux distro of your choice.