Looking for help with disk management

[mjnelson99]

I guess if you want to use a whole drive, you would just format.

On 1/4/2016 11:08 AM, MJNelson wrote:
> I would agree on a need to partition in order to write/read to a drive,
> even to format, especially if wanting to use only part of its capacity.
>
> On 1/4/2016 4:51 AM, DrTeeth wrote:
>> On Sun, 3 Jan 2016 18:58:28 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
>> beethoven disturbed my reverie and wrote:
>>
>>> I am sorry but I am not very experienced and was under the impression that any kind of drive needs to be partitioned so that you write to it.
>> That is, or now was (LOL) my understanding too.
>>
>
>

[Brian K]

TeraByte Support wrote:
> you can force it using IFD/IFL/IFW or linux, etc.. It's not normal.
>

I'm interested. How do you "force" this?

[TeraByte Support(TP)]

Brian K wrote:
> TeraByte Support wrote:
> > you can force it using IFD/IFL/IFW or linux, etc.. It's not normal.
> >
>
> I'm interested. How do you "force" this?

Just as an FYI, one way is from Linux. As long as it has a device file to write to, it essentially doesn't care if it's a partition or an entire drive. Below are examples formatting an entire 3 TB drive (2.7 TiB) as an ext4 file system, and then mounting it - and then the same for NTFS (done from IFL boot disk):

ifl:~# fdisk -l /dev/sde
Disk /dev/sde: 2.7 TiB, 3000592977920 bytes, 732566645 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

ifl:~# mkfs.ext4 -L ext4test /dev/sde
mke2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
/dev/sde is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Creating filesystem with 732566645 4k blocks and 183148544 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 38099822-e3b9-49c3-92a5-d227732f296f
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
102400000, 214990848, 512000000, 550731776, 644972544

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

ifl:~# mount /dev/sde mnt1/

ifl:~# df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs rootfs 2.8G 130.4M 2.7G 4% /
/dev/sde ext4 2.7T 73.0M 2.5T 0% /tbu/mnt1

And then for NTFS (have to use -F to force it to format)

ifl:~# mkfs.ntfs -L ntfstest -f /dev/sde
/dev/sde is entire device, not just one partition.
Refusing to make a filesystem here!

ifl:~# mkfs.ntfs -L ntfstest -f -F /dev/sde
/dev/sde is entire device, not just one partition.
mkntfs forced anyway.
Cluster size has been automatically set to 4096 bytes.
Creating NTFS volume structures.
mkntfs completed successfully. Have a nice day.

ifl:~# mount /dev/sde /mnt

ifl:~# df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs rootfs 2.8G 130.2M 2.7G 4% /
/dev/sde fuseblk 2.7T 151.9M 2.7T 0% /mnt

Hey, it even tells you to have a nice day. The formatted entire drive does show up in Windows (Win7) as a normal drive letter (automatically), as well as in Linux. Some utilities might balk at it since it's not really an expected thing to do with a hard drive...

[TeraByte Support]

/npt for one


"Brian K" wrote in message news:10821@public.image...

TeraByte Support wrote:
> you can force it using IFD/IFL/IFW or linux, etc.. It's not normal.
>

I'm interested. How do you "force" this?

[Brian K]

Thanks for the methods. I'll try these when I get home from holidays.