How to format a harddisk with NTFS ?

pleasehelpme · 12-06-2007, 07:13 AM

How to format a hard disk with NTFS system ?

which command ?

syg00 · 12-06-2007, 07:19 AM

Don't - if it gets an error, it can (usually) only be fixed from Windoze.
Too big a risk.

Else, have a look at this.

jiml8 · 12-06-2007, 08:23 AM

Also, the read/write linux ntfs driver is still immature, not optimized, prone to obscure errors, and slow.

While it is a vast improvement over everything that came before, it still has a way to go before I, for one, would even consider it as a filesystem of choice for a Linux system.

epyonx1 · 12-06-2007, 11:43 AM

I suppose you could use cfdisk (which is a partition editor) at boot to erase that partition and re-configure it. Many Linux distribution include it. I've also heard many good things about Gnome Partition Editor (gparted) though I've never used it myself.

Question ... What are you planning to do by formatting a current NTFS partition? Install another operating system on it or simply use it for storage?

masterclassic · 12-06-2007, 12:03 PM

You can use Gnome Partition Editor (gparted) too. Just, be careful to use some recent version (0.3.3 or 0.3.4), not older 0.2.x versions. Gparted uses ntfstools to work on ntfs.

Mega Man X · 12-06-2007, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jiml8

Also, the read/write linux ntfs driver is still immature, not optimized, prone to obscure errors, and slow.

While it is a vast improvement over everything that came before, it still has a way to go before I, for one, would even consider it as a filesystem of choice for a Linux system.

I agree with jiml8 about not using ntfs as a filesystem in Linux, but I've to disagree about the driver instability. NTFS-3G driver (not the one included with the kernel) has been around for quite a while and it has reached its stable release (1.0) in the beginning of 2007. A lot of Linux distributions are shipping with the driver and so far, I've no problems doing any "normal" (create, modify, rename, move, or delete) operations in any of my NTFS partition.

I also stream videos from my USB-HD (NTFS) to my old Xbox without a hitch through samba. I also use another USB HD as backup and transfering files is pretty quick. So speed is not really an issue here. Check this links if you don't believe me:

http://www.csamuel.org/2007/04/25/co...e-performance/

http://ntfs-3g.org/performance.html

So rest assured that this driver is pretty solid for day-to-day use.

Personally, I would not use NTFS at all if I could. I will most likely format my USB disks to ext3 and create a small partition of type FAT to keep Windows drivers for ext2 on it. I am not a fan of NTFS (the file system itself, not the driver), but I have to say that the Linux drivers work great.

Regards!