I adquired a few months ago a external hard drive.
Recently I found usefull to create a repository of the latest stable debian distribution. It might be extremely usefull, if you usually don't have a fast internet connection and have some machines to keep up to date
Step 1: make the partitions
I had made mine recently..Inicially the hard drive have been formated in a big 300Gb NTFS partition.
Cool, apart the fact I cannot write on it using Linux.
So in order to keep portability I made more partitions in FAT32, the disk now, looks like this:
~# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 18266 146721613+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 18267 36481 146311987+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 18267 23470 41801098+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 23471 29972 52227283+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 29973 36481 52283511 b W95 FAT32
~#
I choosed the last partition the be the target of formating. It's empty for now, and will be formated in ext3 format
I must make sure that the disk is not beeing acessed by any other application and umount it.
~#umount /dev/sda*
umount: /dev/sda: not mounted
umount: /dev/sda1: not mounted
umount: /dev/sda2: not mounted
umount: /dev/sda5: not mounted
umount: /dev/sda6: not mounted
~#
Fomat the partition
~# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda7
mke2fs 1.40-WIP (02-Oct-2006)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
6537216 inodes, 13070877 blocks
653543 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
399 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16384 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
This filesystem will be automatically checked every 36 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
~#
Now it must be formated.. Now I have to change the partition system ID to ext3
~# fdisk /dev/sda
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-7): 7
Hex code (type L to list codes): 83
Changed system type of partition 7 to 83 (Linux)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 18266 146721613+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 18267 36481 146311987+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 18267 23470 41801098+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 23471 29972 52227283+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 29973 36481 52283511 83 Linux
Now i must apply changes made
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
WARNING: If you have created or modified any DOS 6.x
partitions, please see the fdisk manual page for additional
information.
Syncing disks.
~#
checking:
~# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 18266 146721613+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 18267 36481 146311987+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 18267 23470 41801098+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 23471 29972 52227283+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 29973 36481 52283511 83 Linux
Hooray!
Let's mount it and start building the repostory
