I don't know what I did when I tried to format it, but I have been using a backup internal hard drive to back up files, and I remember intending to give it just one partition but somehow ended up with a drive that when I type fdisk -l, it gives me:

Disk /dev/sdb: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimal/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

So there are several questions about this I could ask, but the one thing I am interested in is, how can I find out what type of formatting this has? It must be of some type, right? Or it wouldn't be writing my files.

Or should I just start over, and make sure this is partitioned and formatted in a standard fashion?

I tend to use a partition tool for information on a disk.

https://www.tecmint.com/find-linux-filesystem-type/

Since the title suggests you can't get information then may have to look at testdisk/photorec to see if important files exist.


Yes, I'd investigate what is going on and do full format maybe partition.

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Hello.
I gues there is no partition table ( = diskabel) on the hard drive.
You can easily make a partition table using GParted. You can select msdos type or gpt. for this 465.8 GiB hard drive both types work. For drives bigger than 2 TiB you need gpt.
Of course, this is valid if you are sure your drive is empty or you don't need any actual content. Otherwise, you need to look for content recovery.
GParted can give you info on the partition table and partitions too.

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Is that all the output from fdisk - forget bolding, just the data.
Personally I would simply create the partition table (msdos) add one partition to cover the entire disk. Then see if a filesystem appears. Small steps to not tread on your data.

Well, I found the tecmint link helpful. It gave several ways to get the file system type...I used file -sL and fsck -N and got the indication it is EXT3.

The information about msdos and gpt was very helpful for some other things i am doing as well as this. I will use gparted to create a table just because it seems the proper thing to do, although I still don't see a practical need. The system works fine for me as-is. It is only file backup and it is redundant (secondary) backup.

Just to clarify: I got the warning when I went to create the table in gparted that creating the msdos table would wipe all data from the device. Which is not a problem for me but readers should be aware. I think Masterclassic was clear on this point.

Thank You! I am very grateful to each of you for your valuable and timely responses.

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I understand what you describe:

Making a new partition table overwrites the previous partition table, so the (previous) partition info and content aren't accessible anymore. It's a manner to delete the entire disk (without erasing every byte or sector). Unfortunately some users didn't understand exactly what this was about, perhaps because in older GParted versions the term "disklabel" was used instead of "partition table" (disklabel comes from BSD and has nothing to do with *partition* labels). So, they pressed that command, loosing their disk content and after several unsuccessful revert attempts they went to the GParted support forum, without any backup of their valuable data.

Most of the times it was possible to restore the partition table by "testdisk", however this can be successful if you do it just after. Doing further operations reduces probabilities to get back the original partition table. That's why this warning was added. It was even a double warning several years ago. Now the term "partition table" is used, to make it more clear, and just a simple warning is displayed, because the double warning could panic some users. And be sure, partitioning work isn't everyday's work so this could happen even to experienced computer users.

About using or no partitions: although one can do many things directly on the hard drive space, there are several utilities that work on partitioned media.

Try deep in the options of Gnome Disks. There's sometimes stuff there.