hi there,

I'm very experienced with windows but an absolute beginner in Linux, I made the mistake of installing RH9 Linux thinking I'd have time to get into it. Now 9 months later, I've given up on this idea. My problem is this:

I have a 2 hard-disks in RAID 0 that have 180 megs of data I will call this HDA.
I want to reinstall my computer with Windows XP

I have borrowed a 200mb harddisk for backing up, HDB

my plan was:

1.install hard disk HDB
2.format hard disk HDB <-------------------- main problem.
3.copy data onto hard disk HDB
4.install windows on HDA
5.copy data back from hard disk HDB <---------- ???

so, my problem is this:
1. I don't know how to format a harddisk HDB, and I'm worried about formatting the wrong disk. I have no understanding of Linux file systems.
2. I need to format the harddisk HDB in such a way that when I install windows, I can read this directly from windows.

Is this possible?

When I install windows, can I just put the XP cd and reformat HDA, or will it not recognise it... should I try to fdisk from a dos prompt before installing XP as I've seen suggested on some forums?

thanks..

nick

Just format it as vfat (fat32) then you can read it in both OSs.

ahh ok.

what should I do to format the disk...?

thanks again!

You can use:
mkfs -t vfat /dev/hdxY

Replace xY with the drive letter and partition number.

So...
I've installed the disk, and set the bios to recognise it.

I've logged into RH9, opened a terminal window and logged in as root

when I try the command:

/sbin/fdisk -l (This is a lowercase L)

I get

hda 122.9 GB
/dev/hda1
/dev/hda2
/dev/hda3
hdb 122.9 GB
/dev/hdb1
/dev/hdb2
/dev/hdb3

which would be my previously installed two drives.
but I don't get any information about my new 200GB drive.


so, I'm guessing that my new disk is hdc and the partition would be 1

when I try your command:


mkfs -t vfat /dev/hdc1


I get an error saying it doens't know about that disk.
/dev/hdc1: No such device or address

I think I'm missing some steps..?

further info:

my bios def. detects the disk properly.

when I start Linux, and the page with loads of text and the [ok] 's go past, I see only hda and hdb but no info on hdc

I'm not sure if this is important.

I've found a million tutorials online that say how to do this, but all assume that the fdisk -l shows the disk in question.

hmm... not getting much help here... anyway, I'll continue:

Just did this: dmesg | grep -i hdc and found this:

hdc: Maxtor 6Y200P0, ATA DISK drive
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present

perhaps I should have said that before installing this hard disk there was a CDROM drive attached to the cable.

Is the drive the only one on that ide cable? Is the jumper set to configure it as master or slave?

dave!! you're back!

right... yep, its the only one and its set to master.

I've been searching the internet, and found someone who had a similar problem.

I've had to remove a line from lilo.conf that was left from my old CD Rom, and now its putting the driver in properly.

now when I try fdisk I get this:

unable to read /dev/hdc


further, when I grep the dmesg I get:

end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 0
hdc : bad access: block=0, count=8
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 2
hdc : bad access: block=2, count=6
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 4
hdc : bad access: block=4, count=4
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 6
hdc : bad access: block=6, count=2

I assume when you say it was detected in the bios it showed up with the correct number of cylinders etc?

How sure are you that the drive actually works? Is it new?

the drive isn't new, and no I'm not sure it works.

however, since I last spoke, I managed to get the fdisk to open the drive, although I'm not sure what I did to get that to happen, if anything at all.

so, now I must create my partitions...

but I'm not sure what to select.

fdisk - n ok...

then it asks me if I want to make a primary or extended - ?

For your purposes you will only need 1 primary partition.

ok, ten and a half hours after starting this operation, its now copying...


what a nightmare.

thanks again dave for all your help!

nick