Changing HDD filesystem

[LinuxNewb]

ok ive got FC3 by itself on a 80 gig hard drive, it used to have windows but i formatted the drive. i beleive the current filesystem is either Fat32 or NTFS, now im assuming that linux doesnt completely agree with those fielsystems so i was wondering...

1) how i can check what the file system is

2) if i choose to do a reinstall how i can reformat the drive into a filesystem that linux is more comfortable with

and

3) if i can change the filesystem, which filesystem would be best


thanks in advance

[kyku]

1) as root, type in console:

sfdisk -l /dev/hda

2) If you wan't to repartition and format disk you propably want to reinstall linux, so the tools in instalator should be enough.
3) I'd vote for reiserfs.

[valan]

If it's got Linux on it, I highly doubt that it is FAT or NTFS.

[Stormblazer]

Agreed, linux can't be installed onto an NTFS partition because it can't write to it, and I don't see how you can use an FAT32 partition because FAT32 doesn't support symbollic / hard linking which is vital for linux.
You probably have ext3, but an easy way to check is to open the Hardware Browser in gnome, and look in the harddrive section.
If you're going to reformat it, either use ext3 or reiserFS

[UgoDeschamps]

Hi
to know the filesystem of your system,
in terminal type
fdisk -l
that will give you exactly all partition types.

it is impossible that your Linux distros is running on an NTFS if ever it is, well your comps on crack big time cause the ntfs driver offer ultra limited ntfs support for write access

choosing between filesystem,... well... if your system is only running on linux and your network doesnt include any windows machine that will required Read access on your linux box, then
native Linux file type is what I would suggest personaly..

if you think ull need a windows machine to read some partition of your linux box, then FAT32 is what you should set it to (only for the SWAP folder between WINDOWS and LINUX)

feel free to tell us if you need further help

[LinuxNewb]

im going to do a complete re instal for FC3, guess ill make sure its ext3.

however, how do i set up the swap space to fat32, as i do have a windows xp box that i want to eventually hook up a network with using samba on my linux box

[UgoDeschamps]

simply create a partition that will be in FAT32 format.
allow enough space for file swapping... thats it

[Stormblazer]

Basically, create one partition as ext3 for the main linux partition, an FAT32 partition, and a swap partion (swap doesn't have fs, it's like virtual ram).
The FAT32 drive is for moving files over: place them on that drive in one OS, and you can access them with the other OS since both Windows and Linux can read/write on FAT32.

[valan]

Ext3 isn't all that great, go with Reiser or possibly JFS or XFS.