Formatting an Ex HD

**zacharyrs** · 07-01-2009

i am having serious issues just getting an external hd to format and work with Ubuntu.

I have a 300GB Western Digital hd that was running in MAC osx environment fine. Now i need to make it work in Ubuntu, and I have chosen to simply remove the entire data and start over.

When I open GParted it allows me to partition into most file names except NTFS which is what I really need. I have tried FAT 32, it won't mount. EX2 and EX3, it won't mount. I've deleted everything on there, then formatted it to FAT32 and it won't show on my desktop.

Any help on getting this to work would be greatly appreciated! I really need to use an ex hd to save all my info

**Jonathan183** · 07-01-2009

Welcome to the forums zacharyrs

Originally Posted by zacharyrs

When I open GParted it allows me to partition into most file names except NTFS which is what I really need. I have tried FAT 32, it won't mount. EX2 and EX3, it won't mount. I've deleted everything on there, then formatted it to FAT32 and it won't show on my desktop.

If you are using the drive for Linux only then ext3 is probably the way to go with this. I tend to use the PartedMagic live CD for partitioning and have not run into problems using it yet ... but have not tried creating a 300GB partition.

After you create the partition have you created the filesystem?
How are you trying to mount the partition?
What is the disk partition structure ... post output of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

**zacharyrs** · 07-01-2009

Hey, thanks for writing back.

I'll walk you through my process so everyone is on the same page:

I open up GPARTED and 'Create Partiion Table'. This seems to remove everything.

Then I create a new partition, and I'll make it 'ext2' system and wait for it to do it's thing. (screenshot)

It says it was completed successfully. (screenshot)

Please review the CL info on screenshot.

I then go to System/Computer and I can see the ex hd. However, I cannot save anything to it, and when I click on it I get an error (screenshot).

Thank you so much for replying, I hope you can help me out. I am sure I am missing a step or something.

**Jonathan183** · 07-01-2009

On the last image it looks as though you have the CD/DVD drive selected. I think you should get a symbol on the desktop to allow you to mount the partition.

You could always try to manually mount it ...

Code:

sudo mkdir /media/sdb1
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1

then check if its mounted using

Code:

mount

is the drive partition mounted?

After this to unmount the partition type

Code:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

**zacharyrs** · 07-01-2009

Jonathan, you are proving to be a genius.

You were right, I had the cd/dv-r drive selected!

Now I am able to see the drive, I labeled it 'ex_hd'.

However, I have one last problem and things should be cleared up! Right now the ex_hd is not giving me permissions to create directories or even save files to the hard drive (the entire reason in the first place I wanted to format this hd for linux, as before it would show up on Ubuntu but wouldn't let me create directories).

How can I make such a permissions change? MY NTFS Config Tool is set to 'enable write support for external device' but no such luck.

**zacharyrs** · 07-01-2009

After this to unmount the partition type

Code:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

[/QUOTE]

When I type this in I get 'command not found'

When I click on the drive to unmount, I get the following error (screenshot)

**zacharyrs** · 07-01-2009

The device is now auto-mounting!

Now I just need some insight into how to create directories and so on with it

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

**Jonathan183** · 07-01-2009

You need to make sure no other sessions, terminals etc are trying to access the partition before unmounting it ...

for umount are you sure you did not type unmount by mistake?

Options for giving regular user read/write access are change mount options check man pages for details. I tend to create a folder in the partition with the user name and chown the folder to the user ... check man pages for details ...

Code:

man mount chown

**Jonathan183** · 07-01-2009

Originally Posted by zacharyrs

The device is now auto-mounting!

Now I just need some insight into how to create directories and so on with it

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

OK run

Code:

mount

check were the partition is mounted to ... lets say its /media/sdb1
create folder with username

Code:

sudo mkdir /media/sdb1/your_user_name

then chown the folder to your user

Code:

sudo chown your_user_name /media/sdb1/your_user_name

You should be able to create/delete whatever you want as a regular user in that folder after that.

Code:

man chmod cp

are also likely to be worth a quick read ... cp -a will copy directory trees and preserve file permissions

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