fdisk a 3Tb drive

[root]

I am running 13.37 and I want to partition a 3Tb drive
into a single partition. On my first try I got a 2Tb
partition and wasted space.

How can I get a full 3Tb partition?

If I boot into a 64 bit Slackware can it do a 3Tb partition?

Finally, my target machine is running 32bit Slack 13.0.
If I do get the drive partitioned as 3Tb with an ext4
file system, will there be any trouble writing to the
disk with a 32 bit system?

TIA

[Aragorn]

On Saturday 26 November 2011 19:32, root conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.slackware...

> I am running 13.37 and I want to partition a 3Tb drive
> into a single partition. On my first try I got a 2Tb
> partition and wasted space.

The partition itself can be as large as you make it. Whether you can
create a filesystem on it that would take advantage of all that space
depends upon the filesystem.

> How can I get a full 3Tb partition?

Use a filesystem that supports that. ext4 does. ext3 doesn't.

> If I boot into a 64 bit Slackware can it do a 3Tb partition?

There is no difference in this regard whether you use a 32-bit or 64-bit
operating system.

> Finally, my target machine is running 32bit Slack 13.0.
> If I do get the drive partitioned as 3Tb with an ext4
> file system, will there be any trouble writing to the
> disk with a 32 bit system?

Not if the kernel in Slack 13.0 - I don't know what kernel version that
is - supports ext4.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

[Helmut Hullen]

Hallo, root,

Du meintest am 26.11.11:

> I am running 13.37 and I want to partition a 3Tb drive
> into a single partition. On my first try I got a 2Tb
> partition and wasted space.

> How can I get a full 3Tb partition?

With "gdisk", instead of "fdisk".

Viele Gruesse
Helmut

"Ubuntu" - an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

[Danno]

On Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:53:10 +0100
Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:

<snip>

>
> > How can I get a full 3Tb partition?
>
> Use a filesystem that supports that. ext4 does. ext3 doesn't.
>
> > If I boot into a 64 bit Slackware can it do a 3Tb partition?
>
> There is no difference in this regard whether you use a 32-bit or 64-bit
> operating system.
>
> > Finally, my target machine is running 32bit Slack 13.0.
> > If I do get the drive partitioned as 3Tb with an ext4
> > file system, will there be any trouble writing to the
> > disk with a 32 bit system?
>
> Not if the kernel in Slack 13.0 - I don't know what kernel version that
> is - supports ext4.
>

<snip>


Interesting. I had held off buying 3TB drives for my 32-bit server
because I was under the impression I had to upgrade to a 64-bit kernel and
system. So I've got Slack12.2 as my fileserver running 2.60.30.4-smp with
ext4 support, as well as a motherboard that supports the big big hard
drives. It sounds like you figure I should be able to use ext4-formatted
3TB drives without having to upgrade the OS. Maybe when Thailand is longer
drowning, I'll toss a few in, get a little more life out of that
installation...

Would a computer/device connected via NFS or samba be able to use the
full 3TB of space as well, or would, say, a Popcorn Hour media player (with
an internal limitation of 2TB) also be limited to 2TB drives on the NFS
server?



--
Slackware 13.1, 2.6.33.4-smp, Core i7 920
RLU #272755

[root]

Yes, 13.0 runs 2.29.6 and it does support ext4.
>

OK, I just mounted a new drive via a usb adapter and
fdisk'ed it. Upon entry fdisk said there was 831Gb.
The drive is 3Tb. I created a new (primary) partition
with default starting and ending values.

I created an ext4 file system:
/dev/sdc1 770497968 201440 731157436 1% /sdc1

This says there is something like 731Gb space in the
partition.

Here is what I see for my 2Tb sda:
Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x631f3ddf

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 629147647 314572800 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 629147648 1258293247 314572800 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1258293248 1887438847 314572800 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 1887438848 3907029167 1009795160 83 Linux

Each of the first 3 partitions has 300Gb.

This is worse than my previous attempt which gave me a 2Tb
partition and something like 700Gb left over.

[Aragorn]

On Saturday 26 November 2011 22:26, Danno conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.slackware...

> On Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:53:10 +0100
> Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>>
>> > How can I get a full 3Tb partition?
>>
>> Use a filesystem that supports that. ext4 does. ext3 doesn't.
>>
>> > If I boot into a 64 bit Slackware can it do a 3Tb partition?
>>
>> There is no difference in this regard whether you use a 32-bit or
>> 64-bit operating system.
>>
>> > Finally, my target machine is running 32bit Slack 13.0.
>> > If I do get the drive partitioned as 3Tb with an ext4
>> > file system, will there be any trouble writing to the
>> > disk with a 32 bit system?
>>
>> Not if the kernel in Slack 13.0 - I don't know what kernel version
>> that is - supports ext4.
>>
> <snip>
>
> Interesting. I had held off buying 3TB drives for my 32-bit server
> because I was under the impression I had to upgrade to a 64-bit kernel
> and system.

No, 32-bit versus 64-bit has nothing to do with that.

> So I've got Slack12.2 as my fileserver running 2.60.30.4-smp [...
^^
A typo, surely? ;-)

> ...] with ext4 support, as well as a motherboard that supports the big

> big hard drives. It sounds like you figure I should be able to use
> ext4-formatted 3TB drives without having to upgrade the OS.

As Helmut said, you will probably need to use a partitioning tool that
doesn't have such limitations, because it would appear as if your
version of fdisk does.

> Maybe when Thailand is longer drowning, I'll toss a few in, get a
> little more life out of that installation...
>
> Would a computer/device connected via NFS or samba be able to use
> the full 3TB of space as well, or would, say, a Popcorn Hour media
> player (with an internal limitation of 2TB) also be limited to 2TB
> drives on the NFS server?

I don't know what the limitations are on NFS - Google Is Your Friend but
I can't find anything about it on Wikipedia - but in so far as I know,
CIFS/Samba does have documented limitations in that regard.

[root]

gdisk isn't part of Slack 13.37 so I downloaded the tarball and
built the package. I used the default start/end for a new
partition and I got:

Disk /dev/sdc: 1565565872 sectors, 746.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): ED0C68B4-A9EF-4B46-AAA5-580DDDCCAF37
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1565565838
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 1565565838 746.5 GiB 8E00 Linux LVM

I chose code 8e00 because it looked like the right choice.
I don't suppose the type of partition matters.

Still no 3Tb.

[Henrik Carlqvist]

Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
> As Helmut said, you will probably need to use a partitioning tool that
> doesn't have such limitations, because it would appear as if your
> version of fdisk does.

If I remember right, fdisk in Slackware gives a warning or error message
when trying to partition a drive bigger than 2 TB. The message suggests
using gnu parted instead to create a GPT partition table.

The the good old DOS compatible partition table is unable to handle disks
bigger than 2 TB.

Gnu parted is included in Slackware in the parted package.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc123(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

[root]

Second follow up:
I installed the drive inside another machine running 13.37.
I moved gdisk over to that machine and re-partitioned
the drive with gdisk.

This time it saw the drive as 3Tb, using the default
start/end it ended up with a 2.7 Tb partition.

I followed gdisk with:
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdc1

which created a 2.1Tb space on the partition. Moreover,
after creating the file system I re-ran gdisk and
it said the GPT table was corrupted.

ext4 is writing something to the MBR which gdisk doesn't
like, an it seems that the ext4 file system is limited
to 2Tb.

Thanks for your help. I want a journalling file system
but I'm not wedded to ext4. Any suggestions.

[root]

Third and final follow-up:
I thought that Patrick's kernel had all the bells and whistles
turned on, but I was wrong. In order to enable partitions greater
than 2.1Tb you have to enable the EFI partition type under
"Advanced Partitions".

After doing so and rebuilding the kernel all seems fine now.
Thanks for the help.

[John F. Morse]

Run gparted and use reiserfs.


--
John

When a person has -- whether they knew it or not -- already
rejected the Truth, by what means do they discern a lie?

[root]

Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.C...@deadspam.com> wrote:
> Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
>> As Helmut said, you will probably need to use a partitioning tool that
>> doesn't have such limitations, because it would appear as if your
>> version of fdisk does.
>
> If I remember right, fdisk in Slackware gives a warning or error message
> when trying to partition a drive bigger than 2 TB. The message suggests
> using gnu parted instead to create a GPT partition table.
>
> The the good old DOS compatible partition table is unable to handle disks
> bigger than 2 TB.
>
> Gnu parted is included in Slackware in the parted package.
>
> regards Henrik

As mentioned by Helmut, you use gdisk. Then you have to enable
EFI file system under filetypes/partitions:advanced.

ext4 cannot create a file system >2.1 Tb without the drive
being mounted as EFI.

[Helmut Hullen]

Hallo, root,

Du meintest am 26.11.11:

>>>> How can I get a full 3Tb partition?

>>> With "gdisk", instead of "fdisk".

[...]

> Third and final follow-up:
> I thought that Patrick's kernel had all the bells and whistles
> turned on, but I was wrong. In order to enable partitions greater
> than 2.1Tb you have to enable the EFI partition type under
> "Advanced Partitions".

Thanks back - in my configuration for my special self made kernel this
option is set; I don't know who had set it ...

[Helmut Hullen]

Hallo, Aragorn,

Du meintest am 26.11.11:

>> How can I get a full 3Tb partition?

> Use a filesystem that supports that. ext4 does. ext3 doesn't.

Just for the record: btrfs does it too.

But btrfs is still under heavy construction, and btrfs still only can
drive raid0, raid1 and raid10. Nothing like raid5.

And that means that 1 error in 1 partition/disk can make the whole disk
system unreadable. BTDT.

[Henrik Carlqvist]

root <NoE...@home.org> wrote:

> Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.C...@deadspam.com> wrote:
>> The message suggests using gnu parted instead to create a GPT partition
>> table.

> As mentioned by Helmut, you use gdisk.

Gdisk is one solution, I did mention another solution with parted. There
are at least 3 different solutions:

1) Download, install and use gdisk as suggested by Helmut
2) Use parted which is already installed as suggested by me
3) Do not partition the drive at all, put a single file
system directly on the raw disk.

> Then you have to enable EFI file system under
> filetypes/partitions:advanced.

Maybe that is necessary if you have plans to use the drive for dual boot
purposes with some Microsoft OS. As far as I know Linux has no need for
EFI.

> ext4 cannot create a file system >2.1 Tb without the drive being mounted
> as EFI.

EFI is all about how the system boots. Even though I haven't used ext4
myself I doubt that ext4 whould have some kind of size limitation
connected to EFI. Do you have any pointer to some source explaining such
limitations?

[Henrik Carlqvist]

Hel...@Hullen.de (Helmut Hullen) wrote:

> Du meintest am 26.11.11:
>
>>> How can I get a full 3Tb partition?
>> Use a filesystem that supports that. ext4 does. ext3 doesn't.
>
> Just for the record: btrfs does it too.

And just for the record: ext3 does it too.

There is a 2 TB limitation in ext3, but that limtation in on maximum file
size. The max volume size, just like ext2, is 32 TB. Source of
information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

[Henrik Carlqvist]

root <NoE...@home.org> wrote:
> I thought that Patrick's kernel had all the bells and whistles
> turned on, but I was wrong. In order to enable partitions greater
> than 2.1Tb you have to enable the EFI partition type under
> "Advanced Partitions".

I can now see what you meant by "Then you have to enable
EFI file system under filetypes/partitions:advanced" and

"ext4 cannot create a file system >2.1 Tb without the drive

being mounted as EFI" in your other message.

When I first read the above I thought that you were referring to some menu
in gdisk which I haven't used myself. The kernel option
CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION that you were referring to has IMHO a little
misleading name. It is described as "EFI GUID Partition support" and GUID
Partition support is what we mean when we write GPT. The kernel does
indeed need support for GPT for you to be able to create ext4 or any other
file system on such a large partition.

I found a web page which describes the functions of EFI and GPT in a good
way at
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/fdisk-unable-to-create-partition-greater-2tb.html

Even though I haven't used GPT myself, (I usually place single big file
systems on such big disks,) I see that I have CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION on my
Slackware 13.1 kernel:

$ zcat /proc/config.gz | grep CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION
CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y

I have no memory of enabling it myself, but I can't say for sure if it was
enabled in the stock Slackware kernel as I've build the kernel myself.

[root]

Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.C...@deadspam.com> wrote:
>
> Maybe that is necessary if you have plans to use the drive for dual boot
> purposes with some Microsoft OS. As far as I know Linux has no need for
> EFI.

What I found:
1. starting with a fresh drive I used gdisk to create a single 2.7Tb
partition.
2. I mkfs.ext4 on that disk using a kernel that did not
support EFI partition type.
3. I re-ran gdisk on the partition and gdisk reported the partition
was corrupted. ext4 had written something to the mbr.

4. I rebuilt the kernel adding EFI partition support.
5. I zeroed out the drive using dd if=/dev/zero
6. I used gdisk on the clean drive and created a new 2.7Tb
partition.
7. Again I used mkfs to create an ext4 file system on the drive.
8. Finally I re-ran gdisk to check the partition and this
time gdisk did not report corruption.

While this may not prove you need EFI support to use ext4, it
is good enough for me. There doesn't seem to be any penalty
for including EFI support in your kernel.

[Kees Theunissen]

Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
>
> Even though I haven't used GPT myself, (I usually place single big file
> systems on such big disks,) I see that I have CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION on my
> Slackware 13.1 kernel:
>
> $ zcat /proc/config.gz | grep CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION
> CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
>
> I have no memory of enabling it myself, but I can't say for sure if it was
> enabled in the stock Slackware kernel as I've build the kernel myself.

On a 32-bits 13.1 system with stock kernels:

$ ls -l /boot/config*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 2010-05-30 18:22 /boot/config ->
config-huge-smp-2.6.33.4-smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108261 2010-05-13 07:00 /boot/config-generic-2.6.33.4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108627 2010-05-13 04:41
/boot/config-generic-smp-2.6.33.4-smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108235 2010-05-13 07:28 /boot/config-huge-2.6.33.4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108601 2010-05-13 05:48
/boot/config-huge-smp-2.6.33.4-smp
~$ grep CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION /boot/config*
/boot/config:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-generic-2.6.33.4:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-generic-smp-2.6.33.4-smp:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-huge-2.6.33.4:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-huge-smp-2.6.33.4-smp:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y


Similar result on a 32-bits 13.37 system with stock kernels:

~$ ls -l /boot/config*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Jul 13 15:17 /boot/config ->
config-huge-smp-2.6.37.6-smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117045 Apr 10 2011 /boot/config-generic-2.6.37.6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117520 Apr 9 2011
/boot/config-generic-smp-2.6.37.6-smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117019 Apr 10 2011 /boot/config-huge-2.6.37.6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117494 Apr 10 2011
/boot/config-huge-smp-2.6.37.6-smp
~$ grep CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION /boot/config*
/boot/config:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-generic-2.6.37.6:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-generic-smp-2.6.37.6-smp:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-huge-2.6.37.6:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
/boot/config-huge-smp-2.6.37.6-smp:CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y


Regards,

Kees.

--
Kees Theunissen.

[jeff g.]

On 11/27/2011 05:43 AM, Henrik Carlqvist wrote:

> I found a web page which describes the functions of EFI and GPT in a good
> way at
> http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/fdisk-unable-to-create-partition-greater-2tb.html

newb question:

The above referenced howto shows the following output after using parted:

Model: ATA ST33000651AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 3.00TB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 0.00TB 3.00TB 3.00TB ext4 primary

This shows the fs to be ext4 - what does mkfs do in the next step - the
disk is already ext4, yes?

[o...@grrr.id.au]

No. Partitioning reserves space for a filesystem. Mkfs actually builds a
filesystem within that preallocated (partition) space.

Got it?

You're in dangerous new terrritory playing over 2TB, and it takes
much time too.

First partitiom is 2MB, all partitions are on MB boundaries (finally!).

Takes some reading and getting used to.

Grant.

[jeff g.]

On 12/07/2011 01:59 AM, o...@grrr.id.au wrote:
> On Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:38:59 -0800, "jeff g."<conn...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> On 11/27/2011 05:43 AM, Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
>>
>>> I found a web page which describes the functions of EFI and GPT in a good
>>> way at
>>> http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/fdisk-unable-to-create-partition-greater-2tb.html
>>
>> newb question:
>>
>> The above referenced howto shows the following output after using parted:
>>
>> Model: ATA ST33000651AS (scsi)
>> Disk /dev/sdb: 3.00TB
>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
>> Partition Table: gpt
>> Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
>> 1 0.00TB 3.00TB 3.00TB ext4 primary
>>
>> This shows the fs to be ext4 - what does mkfs do in the next step - the
>> disk is already ext4, yes?
>
> No. Partitioning reserves space for a filesystem. Mkfs actually builds a
> filesystem within that preallocated (partition) space.
>
> Got it?

sorta, yeh. never had to think about it before what with the wonderful
world of the gui installer.

>
> You're in dangerous new territory playing over 2TB, and it takes
> much time too.
>
> First partition is 2MB, all partitions are on MB boundaries (finally!).

>
> Takes some reading and getting used to.
>
> Grant.

tnx, mate

[Keith Keller]

On 2011-12-07, o...@grrr.id.au <o...@grrr.id.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:38:59 -0800, "jeff g." <conn...@cox.net> wrote:
>>
>>The above referenced howto shows the following output after using parted:
>>
>>Model: ATA ST33000651AS (scsi)
>>Disk /dev/sdb: 3.00TB
>>Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
>>Partition Table: gpt
>>Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
>> 1 0.00TB 3.00TB 3.00TB ext4 primary
>>
>>This shows the fs to be ext4 - what does mkfs do in the next step - the
>>disk is already ext4, yes?
>
> No. Partitioning reserves space for a filesystem. Mkfs actually builds a
> filesystem within that preallocated (partition) space.

It may depend on how the partition was created in parted. Unlike fdisk,
parted is able to create filesystems in partitions it creates, though it
may not support all the filesystems that the kernel and OS do.

> Grant.

(Belated) Welcome back, Grant!

--keith

--
kkeller...@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

[o...@grrr.id.au]

On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 10:51:32 -0800, Keith Keller <kkeller...@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:

>On 2011-12-07, o...@grrr.id.au <o...@grrr.id.au> wrote:
>> On Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:38:59 -0800, "jeff g." <conn...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>The above referenced howto shows the following output after using parted:
>>>
>>>Model: ATA ST33000651AS (scsi)
>>>Disk /dev/sdb: 3.00TB
>>>Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
>>>Partition Table: gpt
>>>Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
>>> 1 0.00TB 3.00TB 3.00TB ext4 primary
>>>
>>>This shows the fs to be ext4 - what does mkfs do in the next step - the
>>>disk is already ext4, yes?
>>
>> No. Partitioning reserves space for a filesystem. Mkfs actually builds a
>> filesystem within that preallocated (partition) space.
>
>It may depend on how the partition was created in parted. Unlike fdisk,
>parted is able to create filesystems in partitions it creates, though it
>may not support all the filesystems that the kernel and OS do.

Maybe that's why I prefer to separate the two tasks? Also, I'm
happier doing all partitioning with the Linux tool, including
windoze stuff.

>
>> Grant.
>
>(Belated) Welcome back, Grant!

Thanks, still only part time, as I have just the one lappy,
dual boot slack 13.1, but that's nothing like having multiple
machines on line.

Grant.
>
>--keith

[Keith Keller]

On 2011-12-08, o...@grrr.id.au <o...@grrr.id.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 10:51:32 -0800, Keith Keller <kkeller...@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:
>>
>>It may depend on how the partition was created in parted. Unlike fdisk,
>>parted is able to create filesystems in partitions it creates, though it
>>may not support all the filesystems that the kernel and OS do.
>
> Maybe that's why I prefer to separate the two tasks? Also, I'm
> happier doing all partitioning with the Linux tool, including
> windoze stuff.

parted is able to do so (using mkfs, or mkpartfs), but it doesn't have
to (using mkpart). I too personally tend to use mkpart, then use the
filesystem tools to make the filesystem, but if we answer questions
about it we need to be prepared for the situations where the OP may have
used mkfs or mkpartfs (or may not remember).

> Thanks, still only part time, as I have just the one lappy,
> dual boot slack 13.1, but that's nothing like having multiple
> machines on line.

All in good time! :)

[o...@grrr.id.au]

On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:20:10 -0800, Keith Keller <kkeller...@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:

>On 2011-12-08, o...@grrr.id.au <o...@grrr.id.au> wrote:
>> On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 10:51:32 -0800, Keith Keller <kkeller...@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:
>>>
>>>It may depend on how the partition was created in parted. Unlike fdisk,
>>>parted is able to create filesystems in partitions it creates, though it
>>>may not support all the filesystems that the kernel and OS do.
>>
>> Maybe that's why I prefer to separate the two tasks? Also, I'm
>> happier doing all partitioning with the Linux tool, including
>> windoze stuff.
>
>parted is able to do so (using mkfs, or mkpartfs), but it doesn't have
>to (using mkpart). I too personally tend to use mkpart, then use the
>filesystem tools to make the filesystem, but if we answer questions
>about it we need to be prepared for the situations where the OP may have
>used mkfs or mkpartfs (or may not remember).

Unless they want superfloppy format, there's no partition
table at all. It works okay for USB sticks, but one must
remember to attempt mounting the whole device, /dev/sdN,
in the face of garbage fdisk or other partition tool results.

>
>> Thanks, still only part time, as I have just the one lappy,
>> dual boot slack 13.1, but that's nothing like having multiple
>> machines on line.
>
>All in good time! :)

Yes... Waiting is.

Grant.