[USB SATA connection] Changing file system from NTFS to Ext3

[J]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 09:13, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 1:50 AM, Ted Hilts <thilts at mcsnet.ca> wrote:
>> My Ubuntu machine is a dual boot (XP and Ubuntu).  I am gradually
>> formatting the original XP NTFS IDE drives over to Ext3 so there will be
>> just a small  XP system and a large Ubuntu system. In order to build a
>> Linux source respository I obtained a SATA Terra Byte USB external drive
>> which the store had already set up as NTFS which Ubuntu had no problem
>> integrating.  Problem is I want Ext3 not NTFS.  Also, this USB Sata
>> drive prevents boot up and I have to turn it off before shutting down
>> and turn it on once the system has passed the boot up stage.  This
>> situation has caused me to wonder what I am doing wrong.  I was just
>> going to leave the system (including the USB external Sata drive)
>> running and then "umount" the  USB Sata drive, format as Ext3 and then
>> "mount" but I think I am missing something here because I want the USB
>> external Sata drive to be permanently in place so that it powers up with
>> the rest of the system and powers down with the rest of the system
>> without me having to turn it OFF and ON as a separate disk entity.
>>
>> Is there someone knowledgeable on this subject that can give me some
>> direction?
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any guidance, Ted Hilts
>
> Couple of things.
>
> [1] Your external drive. Either you can use USB *or* you can use
> eSATA, but *not both*.

He didn't say eSATA, he said SATA.  It's just semantics... pretty much
all external hard disks > 500GB are guaranteed to be SATA disks in a
USB external enclosure.  There are also eSATA external disks, but the
most common ones out there are SATA drives put into USB 2.0
enclosures.

Besides which.. I can "theoretically" use both USB and eSATA... my
laptop has two USB 2.0 ports and an eSATA port built in...  :-)

> [2] Why not just reformat the external as ext3 or better still for
> that size ext4, then?

Agreed.  And I'm pretty sure that's what he wants to do.  It sounds
like he's taking about converting the partitions on his onboard disks
over, then he gets into the USB drive and things get muddled from
there..

SO, Ted, can you clarify exactly WHAT you have, WHAT you are doing to
change it, and WHAT you expect the outcome to be?

Moving on...

Ted: You're problem is most likely in your BIOS.  You have it (or it
is set by default) to boot from USB devices.  You'll have to disable
that, or see if you can change the boot device order in BIOS so that
your onboard drives are booted BEFORE any USB devices.

What you should be able to do is change the boot order so your onboard
drive boots first, and then should you ever need to boot from a USB
device, you should see an option listed on your boot splash screen
(when the system first powers on) that gives you options for entering
BIOS setup and for selecting boot device.

On my system, the boot splash tells me sometihing like F1 to enter
BIOS and F12 to choose boot devices.  That way I can boot alternate
items should I need to, but otherwise, my system will always boot from
its onboard hard drive regardless of what devices I have plugged in
via USB.

Hope that helps...

Cheers
Jeff