New External Hard-Drive format issue

[NoOp]

On 03/05/2010 02:44 PM, MirJafar Ali wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> May be this question has nothing to do with Ubuntu in general, but someone
> probably give good advice.
> 
> Recently I have purchased one seagate 640GB portable hard-drive and most of
> the time ( > 95% ) I work on
> Linux ( Ubuntu of course ). So
> 
> 1.   Is it advisable to format the disk with ext4 fileformat ? I use Ubunbu
> 9.10 right now.

Ext4 is fine as long as you only intend to access the drive from 9.10
and above. My recommendation however would be to use Ext3 for the time
being so that should you choose to access the drive from older versions
of Ubuntu, and Windows drives with programs like
ttp://www.fs-driver.org/ you'll be able to do so. Obviously, you can
simply reformat various parts of the drive using ntsf, ext3, ext4 etc.,
as you wish. See:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/switching/installing-partitioning.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ConvertFilesystemToExt4

> 
> 2.   If I reformat my disk for ext4 filesysystem, will I loose "preloaded
> backup and encryption software".

I suppose it depends upon what preloaded backup and encryption software
you have on the drive. If this is something supplied by the
manufacturer, then the answer is probably yes. Check with your
documentation and google/search for 'ubuntu +<drivedetails> before doing
anything. If you expect list support then you'll need to post the drive
details (including the software supplied with it) here so others that
may have the same drive can advise further.
...