need help reformating hdd

[thrustan]

i am about to get a large hdd. this is going to be a traveling storage device. therefore, i will be carring it from place to place.

what i need it to be is versatile. i need it to be able to be recognized by windows and all linuxes.

how do i reformat it to be able to be used as a plug-and-ready hdd?

[OErjan]

I would use fat32, only limitation is that it wont work on large files, limit is 1 bit under 4 Gb.
if you need that (DVD iso's, large films...) you might partition it in two, one half ntfs and other Fat32.
the ntfs can be READ by linux (and of cource XP and Win2000, nt4) easily, writing is shaky at best, and the fat32 is read/write for both (but has that anoying limitation).
hope it helps
EDIT
perhaps divide it in 3, one NTFS onefat32 and oneEXT3, the EXT3 is only read/write for Linux (is not even seen by Win) but can handle files up to a few terabyte iirc./EDIT

[thrustan]

perhaps divide it in 3, one NTFS onefat32 and oneEXT3, the EXT3 is only read/write for Linux (is not even seen by Win) but can handle files up to a few terabyte iirc./EDIT
if i reformat it as part ext3, then files in that partition cannot be used in windows.

i wanted a partition that will be recognized by both windows and linux.

[OErjan]

yes BUT there are ways around this, like the program that alows for win to see files in a ext2 partition...

[Lognok]

Hi, just formated my external 40GB HD with knoppix. Searched the net for a guide, when I ran into this:

http://www.iodata.com/usa/forum/showthread.php?p=772#post772

I unmounted the drive in Knoppix and typed:

mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1

Voila!, one 40GB HD for sharing my Lin and Win files on.

Hope it helps, even though I might have misunderstood this post.

Q

[OErjan]

the hdd can be up to a few hundred GIG, the sizelimit is for a single FILE.