Whether u have to mount fat32 or ntfs partition manually depend on wut u told slackware during the setup time. After creating the root and swap partition during the setup of slack, it asked u whether u want any other partition to be mounted. U can tell it at that time, and /etc/fstab will be configured automatically ..

Wut u need to know is where is the fat32,ntfs partitions like /dev/hda1, /dev/hdb1
and
where u want it to be mounted like /mnt/w2p, /mnt/ntfs-ftp ..

Note: mount point is like share folder by windows, normally u have a (C:,D:,E: ..) for each partitions in windows, but it is also possible to create an partition without an (C:,D:,E: label) with Harddisk manager in windows2k .. in this case u have to create a share to access to it like C:\ftp-share, this share is called mount-point in unix filesystems ..

Unix doesn't have (C:,D: ..) the C: is actually "/". It is the root of the filesystem, any other partitions must be mounted into it's subfolder relatively to "/" in order to be accessed ..

About the 2G limit, I don't know, but I'm assuming it knows about the limits or it wouldn't be able to write to it reliably. Don't count on that though, just try it on a disk with less important data or with no data at all when you're not sure.

fat16 has the 2 gig limit- but i've read that you can make the partitions larger w/ 4gig about the max.

edit: when linux states vfat is it fat16?

No, vfat works with FAT32 too.

What does w/ mean?

w/ = with. it's not linux coding

Bj?n, i formatted a partition using vfat fom redhat's disk druid, and the label that was affixed to it in a different program (not sure which one), it was stated as fat16. but i've also seen partitions formatted w/ ext3, and showed as ext2 elsewhere. it's one of those grey areas. i drew upon the formatted vfat partition as fat16, and just wondered about writing to fat32. would then formatting, and read writes be a diffrerent matter

Hi ppl,

If u don't plan to use those DOS-OS (msdos,drdos ..) why don't u just use fat32 instead of fat16 ? Isn't fat32 offer more improvement from fat16 ?

Wut I know is that fat32 partition can be well mounted as vfat partition as I always do ..

In the early time ppl always suggested to format DOS/Windows partitions with DOS/window, just FYI ..

fat32 is better provided the os can use it. can't just use what you want, you have to use what's compatable, and make some decisions about which one to choose. win95 comes to mind. something like the first one is fat16, and the win95B osr2 version can use fat32 (or fat16). if win3.11 uses fat 16, then all dos versions would use fat16 as well (true dos versions)???

i've seen some advice to not partition from linux for dos/ windows partitions. i think it was about the partition tables being wriiten differently, but i'm not certain of this. i follow that advice though.

Well, I don't know what the format of a partition becomes when formatting as vfat, because I thought vfat supported both FAT16 and FAT32 formatted partitions.

i think i saw it as fat16, but then i've seen ext3 reported as ext2, so i'm not specifically sure.

perhaps creating a vfat partition, and read/ writes to "vfat" are two different matters?

I don't know about Redhat or druid, but if you format from the command line with the command mkdosfs, it will default to fat16. To format fat32, use this command:

mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/hd?#

As far as ext2 or ext3, they're basically the same filesystem, with journalling added to make ext3.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere