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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: Hannu on September 28, 2015, 07:28:58 PM



Title: How to format 700 Gb hard disk to blockchain use?
Post by: Hannu on September 28, 2015, 07:28:58 PM
Hello its me again,

What windows tool i need to format USB hard disk to blockchain? So rasbian can use it?
xFat is not supported i try it in rasbian :-\



Title: Re: How to format 700 Gb hard disk to blockchain use?
Post by: unamis76 on September 28, 2015, 07:30:55 PM
Didn't quite understand your question, but you can format to whatever you want basically. just go with either NTFS if on Windows or ext4 if on Ubuntu or similar.


Title: Re: How to format 700 Gb hard disk to blockchain use?
Post by: achow101 on September 28, 2015, 07:35:01 PM
Hello its me again,

What windows tool i need to format USB hard disk to blockchain use, rasbian?
xFat is not supported i try it  :-\
Format it to ext4 so that it can be used by raspbian.You can do it with the gparted tool on raspbian to format the hard drive there. Windows will not be able to read an ext4 formatted hard drive, so you will need another tool to read and write to the hard drive on windows.

Or you can just use NTFS which will work on both OSes.


Title: Re: How to format 700 Gb hard disk to blockchain use?
Post by: Xialla on September 28, 2015, 08:15:28 PM
ahh, I'm sure that it is visible for linux even now, but you don't know how to proceed.

try to fdisk -l and check for new disk here and then dd if=/dev/zero of=dev/sdX (your disk). so basically, if you want to use it with linux, format and partition it within linux.


Title: Re: How to format 700 Gb hard disk to blockchain use?
Post by: unholycactus on September 28, 2015, 08:20:58 PM
ahh, I'm sure that it is visible for linux even now, but you don't know how to proceed.

try to fdisk -l and check for new disk here and then dd if=/dev/zero of=dev/sdX (your disk). so basically, if you want to use it with linux, format and partition it within linux.

He is asking for a Windows tool though. You should have better luck with EXT4 and possibly NTFS. Even FAT32 should work for storing the blockchain.


Title: Re: How to format 700 Gb hard disk to blockchain use?
Post by: Bitmix.in on October 06, 2015, 03:27:22 PM
In my opinion, to use an external USB HDD on Raspbian, format it as EXT4.

You can do this 2 ways:

One way
1. Download EaseUS Partition Master and format the external HDD

Other Way:

1. Use Windows to create a GParted Live USB image (http://gparted.org/).
2. Boot into GParted live and format the HDD.

The way I like :)
1. Boot Raspbian and connect USB HDD

2. Start a root session
In a default Raspbian installation, the user will be a sudo allowed user, so if your installation is like this, you will have to run:
Code:
~ sudo -i

3. Run (as root)
Code:
# fdisk -l   # -- just like Xialla commented, and identify the disk you are currently going to format. (you can use # lsblk too)
# fdisk /dev/sdX # -- where X is the USB HDD identifier, it may be sda/sdb/sdc... be sure not to use your main HDD/SD Card
// -- In fdisk you create the partition table and HDD structure -- Some useful options are
// option n: new partition
// option d: delete partition
// option t: partition type (you can type L to list all available types)
// option w: write the partition table created
// option q: quits fdisk

Once you created the partition, format it as an EXT4 filesystem.

Code:
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX1  # this is: format into EXT4 the first partition of disk X

Note:
~ - Means Run as user
# - Means Run as root
// - Means Comment

You will now have an external USB HDD ready to write info into it.

I would not recommend to use NTFS or FAT32 in a GNU/Linux machine (even though it can be used as well). I only use these when it's totally needed or to access a Windows partition that's NTFS.
I would prefer EXT4 because I think it will performance better than FAT32/NTFS in Raspbian.