[Epotn]

i have an external hard drive but i dont know which type of format to use on the drive, i want to use fat so it can be like a big flash drive that i can use in linux and windows, but i think that windows has a problem with a FAT over 32gb so what would be the best format to use?

also the reason i dont want to use ntfs is because i formatted my other external hard drive ntfs and out of the blue linux couldnt write to it i tried chaning the permissions in root and everything but i couldn't get it to rwx it can only read it
thanks
-Epotn

[devils casper]

Most of Linux distros don't support NTFS wirte access out of box. You have to install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access. ntfs-3g is stable and I haven't faced any problem with till now.

Go for NTFS only. Btw, which Linux distro are you using?

[Epotn]

im using opensuse 10.2 it support ntfs right out of the box but ive had problems like i said above that it wont let me write to it thats why i wanted to go with another format

[devils casper]

You have to setup user permissions only.
Have you tried setting usmask value to zero?

mount -t ntfs-3g  /dev/<partition>  <mount_point> -o defaults,umask=0

I never had any problem with NTFS read/write access or permissions.

[Epotn]

yea opensuse already has ntfs support, but with a distro that doesnt out of the box support ntfs isnt it annoying to have to always

mount ntfs-3g /media/external

[devils casper]

Edit /etc/fstab file and add an entry for external media. You wont have to execute that command again.

[sikorskius]

Hello everybody I am new to the forums

I have encountered a similair problem with my external drive(Maxtor 3200 500GB). I wanted to use it both on Windows and Mandrivia 2008. However I was not able to write to the drive. I tried changing the permissions, but that i got a pop up saying that changing permissions was restricted/impossible. I serched the formus here and somebody mentioned that ext.3 works on both Linux and Windows, so I formatted the external and created one partition in ext.3. Now Windows Xp did not even recognize the drive. So naturally came back and saw this thread.

Now I need to reformat the external in ntfs, however Mandrivia allows me to format it in ntfs-3g. Now the question is which one should I choose. I would prefferably like ntfs and then just use ntfs package on Linux and the external should work flawlessly on Windows and Linux alike.? Am I correct?

Also I don't know what mount point to set up when formatting the external. I want it to be recognized as a removable external hard drive. Right now the default mount point is set to /usr. Should I change it to /media?

[sikorskius]

Alright now it seems to work. I installed ntfs-3g, and the drive is recognized. However I am unable to write anything on it because I don't have the permissions to do that. Can anybody help me out?

I tried doing this:

# mount -t ntfs-3g  /dev/sda1  /media/ -o defaults,umask=0

And in response I got this

fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy
FUSE mount point creation failed
Unmounting /dev/sda1 ()

Edit:

Alright now everything seems to work, however I can only access the external when I am signed on as a root. Is there a way to change that?

Edit#2:

I have tried unmounting the drive through the "Savely Remove", that did not work,so I just unplugged the usb cable. After I plugged it back in and I tried accessing the external I got this message:

Cannot obtain lock on /media/.hal-mtab