# Cannot format External Hard drive using fedora



## walkaloner (Dec 21, 2008)

Hello, i am using Fedora 10 as my OS and when i plugin my WD2500 External Hard Drive (which at one point was used to run an OS), it registers as /boot, says it only has 189 MB (should read 230GB) and it will not let me read and files, or even format the drive completely. I want to destroy all data in this drive and have it able to store information as it has before. can anyone help me with this situation? is it possibal to format it from grub or even setup/boot menu?


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

Just curious.

What makes you think the /boot is in the external WD2500 drive?

Could you be making a mistake trying to format the /boot of the Fedora?

The 189Mb is obviously a partition and does not represent the whole disk.

You can never format a hard disk. It is always a partition!

The correct way is "umount" the partition or partitions first, then next "delete" the partition or all the partitions in an external drive, thirdly create your alternative partition (or partitions) and then format it (or them). In creating a partition you also choose its filing system type and so the formatting instruction can be different too.

You should never format a partition unless you know absolutely what you are doing. If a Linux disallows you to format /boot it could very well be the Fedora's own /boot partition. Nuking it renden your Fedora unbootable and partially destroyed.

Finally Grub allows you to delete, create and change the partition type. It does *not* do formatting.


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## jrbuergel (Jan 17, 2004)

If you can boot into your Fedora fine, then run; fdisk-l in a terminal as root, which will list all your drives partitions. I boot to a CD called GParted which is a good popular Linux partition tool, here; http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ , you can download it, then burn an image of the iso file on CD, or order one here; http://www.osdisc.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi/products/linux/gparted/lcd.html


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