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

[Ted Hilts]

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

I am using USB not eSATA.

For the moment let's say that I do your point [2] -- would there be any 
difference between using the mount and umount commands when compared to 
a regular IDE mount and umount as in "sudo umount /media/xxxx" and then 
formating using the command (which would be ? -- I don't know) and then 
"sudo mount /media/xxxx"? The "xxxx" is one item confusing me as to-date 
all the IDE disks are "sdc1" as an example or sde1" etc!  None are HD 
type. This does not seem right to treat the USB connection as if it were 
an SD type.  Maybe it should be a special type -- I don't know.  Is 
there a special designation for external USB connections? The system 
called the connection EXTERNAL. What if I just designated the external 
drive as HD or SD or some other designation -- what would happen???  
Also, my Ubuntu is 8.04 (Hardy) updated from 7.10. The Kernel has 
advanced up to 2.6.24-27-rt and I use GNOME 2.22.1.  Also, the most 
advanced filesystem I have in SBIN is /sbin/fsck.ext3 and 
/sbin/mkfs.ext3 so importing ext4 onto the system may cause a conflict 
with my present kernel.  It is my understanding that Ext4 was ready only 
on Ubuntu 10. What do you think?  So, Ive got a couple of concerns -- 
maybe you or someone else could address for me.  Since you will probably 
ask I will tell you ahead. I do not want to upgrade to 9.x and higher 
(for a while) and am installing 2 very up-to-date systems (Deb and 
Ubuntu).  So I do want to stick with the current Ubuntu machine and I 
like it very much.and I have specialty applications I run on it -- last 
major update (to 8.04) automatically got rid of these applications and I 
don't want that to happen again.  I might just keep 8.04 (plus) just for 
the sake of these applications.

Please advise -- Thanks, Ted Hilts.

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