I need help in formatting my external hard drive in Ext3 format

I want to format my external hd to ext3 and only use knoppix live cds. I only have the hds for data storage. But there's a problem. When I create the partitions using qtparted and then format it with ext3, it has a 40gb partition of 2Gb at start and then after a reboot there is nothing shown in the same. And if I format with xfs, which I have done so far are only 256 kbs used. How can I partition the same manually by format command with ext3, without much space is consumed.

Xfs journaling file system is 256kByte and that is why you are getting that size. My ext3 partitions earlier had only max 900kbyte occupied. It is the format of any change you have to pare values standard because it reserves a lot. I had tested the same on my usb and found that there are some blocked lost & found folder that does not disappear as often I delete it and 9% of the file system permanently occupied.

The xfs inodes are generated on the fly dynamically in contrast to ext3. These are already generated during mkfs and therefore take place away even if the drive is empty. This means that the advantage is this is that xfs has to create xfs inodes which consumes space. This can be dynamically created inodes in the general use of space better. When mke2fs the way, one can determine the number of inodes even (-N) in order to save space. The size of the journals can be influenced.

Before partition, it is important to know the configuration of its partitions. The command fdisk-l "to list the disk partitions: # fdisk -l /dev/hdX. The command line is # fdisk /dev/hdXx / # cfdisk /dev/hdXx / # parted. To manipulate the partitions, the tool owner the best known tool is probably Partition Magic. But in Linux, there are free tools available in Live CD which are capable of doing the same thing.

There are some things which you will need to avoid in this. With lilo, you must reinstall if the partition on which it is installed is changed. Grub is not necessary. It is mandatory to use a live cd to change a system partition of Linux. After changing the partitions, it may be necessary to reconfigure lilo or grub (/ boot / grub / menu.lst or configuration of / etc / fstab. For partition stuff you can use various stuff like Mandriva boot disk, Gparted and QtParted.

TestDisk can detect the structure of disk partitions even when the partition table is cleared. If you can not fix your start-up problems, and that the commands 'cfdisk' and 'fdisk' you say there is no partition table to read on your hard disk, it is possible that this table has been corrupted. The command line for the same is # gpart /dev/device. Do not turn off your computer and do not stop the program until it has finished writing the table.