do I need to format this new external drive

[anthony baldwin]

Liam Proven wrote:
> On 14/01/2008, anthony baldwin <anthony.baldwin01 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> This may seem like a silly question, but,
>> I just received my shiny, spanking new Maxtor external drive from
>> TigerDirect, which appears to be loaded with some software for
>> automating backups on windopes machines.
>>
>> Should I wipe and format this drive before using it for my backups?
>>
>> thanks
>> /tony
> 
> Depends. Do you want to preserve things like permissions when copying
> onto the drive?
> 
> If it's >2GB, it won't be FAT16, it will be FAT32, which is actually a
> reasonably efficient, fast FS with good long name support. You can
> back up onto it using DAR, say. Leaving it FAT32 will mean that it's
> also accessible from Windows, a Mac or almost anything else, which
> might be an advantage.
> 
> If you /know/ you'll only ever use it with Linux and don't care about
> other OSs being able to at best read and not write to it, then sure,
> reformat as ext3 or something.
> 
> 

Actually, that's what I did.
Formatted it ext3, then copied my /home to it.
Now, I'm going to completely re-arrange my hdd, but that's another thread.

thanks
tony

-- 
Anthony Baldwin
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