do I need to format this new external drive

[Liam Proven]

On 14/01/2008, anthony baldwin <anthony.baldwin01 at comcast.net> wrote:
> This may seem like a silly question, but,
> I just received my shiny, spanking new Maxtor external drive from
> TigerDirect, which appears to be loaded with some software for
> automating backups on windopes machines.
>
> Should I wipe and format this drive before using it for my backups?
>
> thanks
> /tony

Depends. Do you want to preserve things like permissions when copying
onto the drive?

If it's >2GB, it won't be FAT16, it will be FAT32, which is actually a
reasonably efficient, fast FS with good long name support. You can
back up onto it using DAR, say. Leaving it FAT32 will mean that it's
also accessible from Windows, a Mac or almost anything else, which
might be an advantage.

If you /know/ you'll only ever use it with Linux and don't care about
other OSs being able to at best read and not write to it, then sure,
reformat as ext3 or something.


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