[Sussex] Label and partition external hard drive

['Fay Zee']

Thanks for replying Steve.

On 22 February 2011 17:47, Steven Dobson  wrote:
> I use XFS (which was first developed by SGI, although there are
other
> filesystems like ext2/3/4, JFS and others) for which the command
is:
> # mkfs -t xfs -L  

Having never used multiple-partitioned external disks, is it one
label for the disk or one per partition?

One partition is to share between Windows XP and Debian.
Do I assume this Windows partition will have to be the first on the
disk?
Should I go for ntfs or vfat?
$ man mkfs only mentions vfat, but googling came up with mkntfs.
$ man mkntfs shows there is a -n option which looks like a practice
step :-)
So assuming I've already created the partitions:
It's either: # mkfs -t vfat -L "eSATA-DS160" "/dev/sdf1"
Or: # mkntfs -L "eSATA-DS160" "/dev/sdf1"

The other two partitions are for Linux. I will probably go for ext3.
Is it: # mkfs -t ext3 -L "eSATA-DS160" "/dev/sdf2"

> The echo command doesn't look right to me.  The quotes will be
> interrited by the command shell.  What you are trying to do is
> add the line:
>    ndrive x: file="/dev/sdf1"
> to the end of the file.  You need to use the command:
>        # echo -e "ndrive x: file="/dev/sdf1"" >>
/etc/mtools.conf
> The backslashes are important.

Actually the backslashes must have been removed by your mail client
in reply mode.
They are present in my original post:

# echo -e "ndrive x: file="/dev/sdf1"" >> /etc/mtools.conf

>> # mlabel ????????
>> I want to know how to view the label first.
> Having just tried it mlabel displays any label if there is one
before
> asking you want you want the new label to be.
>        # mlabel r:
>         Volume label is RedDisk (abbr=REDDIS~1àÀ¶)
>        Enter the new volume label : RedFlash
>        #

I ran into a problem here. # cat /etc/mtools.conf shows the final
line as: drive x: file="/dev/sdf1" but:
# mlabel x:
Result:
Initial byte of fat is not 0xff
Cannot initialize 'X:'
mlabel: Cannot initialize drive

> However the screen partitioning tool "cfdisk" will display the
partition
> table and any labels it finds there in:
>
>        # cfdisk -P s /dev/sdc
>
>                       cfdisk (util-linux-ng
2.17.2)
>
>                              Disk
Drive: /dev/sdc
>                        Size: 1000275456
bytes, 1000 MB
>               Heads: 64   Sectors per Track: 32  
Cylinders: 953
>
>    Name  Flags Part Type  FS Type  [Label]        Size
(MB)
>   ------------------------------------------------------------
>    sdc4  Boot  Primary    FAT16    [REDFLASH]    
999.30
>
>
>   [ Bootable ]  [  Delete  ]  [   Help   ]  [ Maximize
]  [  Print   ]
>   [   Quit   ]  [   Type   ]  [  Units   ]  [ 
Write   ]
>
>                  Quit program without writing
partition table
>
>        

(Thanks for including the last hint about quitting at that point.)

$ man cfdisk gives me plenty of info about geometry and zeroing the
first 512 bytes but it looks like there will be more to it since I
need Windows to access one of the partitions.
And without exact example commands I wouldn't have the confidence to
run anything.

The last time I attempted to label a disk was with the single hard
drive in my favourite PC of the time. I used a graphical tool, either
in Ubuntu or puupy live and the drive ended up corrupted. It was only
10 or 20GB and I had deliberately backed up my entire home directory
onto an external drive beforehand :-) so no harm done other than
needing to get a replacement disk.

> Then you can use "mkfs" to lay a filesystem down.

Yes, label and partition in one step, then format and build the fs in
the next step.

I think I've still got a way to go yet though.

But I'll document when I'm done. 

Best Regards,
Fay
East Grinstead Linux User Group
www.eglugorg.uk


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