Ubuntu

maximizing use of reformated external HD

Asked by vergarr

I just bought a My Book external HD and reformatted it from fat32 to ext3 using GParted. When I remount it I discovered a folder labeled "lost+found" and discovered that 15.1gb are used. I learned that the lost+found directory is normal to be there and not a problem and that it isnt really 15gigs big but that ext2 and ext3 partitions keep as default 5% of the disk space reserved for the root user. I want to be able to access the whole HD for storage and I think the command
tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdxx
will do this for me. GParted tells me that the partition is /dev/sdb1
but before I do this I want to be sure that if I enter tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1 it will do as I intend and that I wont unwittingly damage anything in the process. Can anyone verify this for me?
Thank You.

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marcobra (Marco Braida)
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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Please wait...

On a new external just fromatted hard-disk i think you must usually only see free space...

Please tell have you used gparted, booting your pc from live cd...?

We need also some info about your hard disk partitions... so please plug your external hard-disk and open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

sudo fdisk -l

copy and paste result here.

Thank you

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vergarr (moonsdad) said : 		#2

I booted from the hard disk when I used GParted, the external HD was plugged in but not mounted.

results of sudo fdisk -l are:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x58fe5f6c

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 192 5414 41943040 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5415 19457 112800397+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 5415 18881 108173646 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 18882 19457 4626688+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x44fdfe06

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 38913 312568641 83 Linux

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Best marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#3

Obviously i can't test the tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdxx as you ask in the original question.

Read http://linux.ncl.ac.uk/format/

You can format your /dev/sdb1

Open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -j /dev/sdb1

or if root privileges are required to use mkfs.ext3, type

sudo mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -j /dev/sdb1

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Hope this helps

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vergarr (moonsdad) said : 		#4

Heres what I did:
moonsdad@Calgacus:~$ tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1
tune2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
tune2fs: Permission denied while trying to open /dev/sdb1
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

moonsdad@Calgacus:~$ mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -j /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
mkfs.ext3: Permission denied while trying to determine filesystem size

moonsdad@Calgacus:~$ sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1
tune2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Setting reserved blocks percentage to 0% (0 blocks)

This worked and now all free space is available for use. I think either command would work. Had I known of mkfs.ext3 to begin with it would have saved me the extra step of tune2fs. Thank you.

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vergarr (moonsdad) said : 		#5

Thanks marcobra, that solved my question.