Formatting an external hard drive (500 GB Barracuda)

English Install/Boot/Login
1

How can I use YaST to format an external disk? The hard drive I am trying to turn into a back up for pictures I take on a daily basis used to run Kubuntu, but I got tired of updating 2 operating systems and want the (external) disk to just be a picture dump. My every day machine runs openSUSE 15.1 (writting this on it now).

I have used YaST > Partitioner… and tried Mount, Do Not Mount, EXT4, Btrfs, Encrypt, Do Not Encypt, Operating System, Swap, Raw Volume… then I try to send documents to the external disk, but it is unusable. I also attempted this on a computer running Mint; told it to replace all the space to ones and zeros which took five hours and did nothing… Debian gave me a hard time and Ubuntu seems to wipe disks in a weird format that can only be read if on Gnome (or that is what I remember reading)…

I have gone through some old threads here and there, but their question was regarding the difference between EXT4 and Btrfs. Some other posts explain how to install openSUSE on an external drive or how to have several partitions on the same disk.

Somebody recommended using gparted and suggested NTFS if I wanted windows compatibility. Ext4 or FAT32 if not. Someone else saw my question and said exFAT was the way to go.

So now I just don’t know. The external disk will be used to back up pictures. Compatible with… Linux. My desktop has openSUSE on one hard drive and Debian on the second hard drive. My laptop runs openSUSE. The computer connected to the TV runs Mint.

Can anybody tell me what to choose in YaST (to turn a 500 GB disk into a gigantic USB stick) or direct me to a document with instructions?

Thank You.

2

Format and mount should do what you want. Or format but don’t mount, and have it mount when you plug it in or when your file manager requests mount. You will need to decide on a file system to use.

Most likely, the problem you are having is that when you have formatted and mounted the disk, that file system is owned by root. So, as the root user, you would need to change permissions.

As the only user here, I would probably format as “ext4” but I would not mount in Yast partitioner. I would then manually mount, with something like:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

but check that “sdb1” – it might be something different, depending on what other disks you have there.

Then I would do (as root user at a command line):


cd /mnt
chown username .

where “username” would be the username that I use to login. That way, once it is mounted, I don’t have to be root to write to it.

Maybe add a label. For “ext4” that would be:

e2label /dev/sdb1 MyPictures

Again, replace “sdb1” by the correct device designation for this disk. And again, you need to be root to label.

After that, you should be able to use your desktop to mount it. And it would probably mount at “/run/media/username/MyPictures”. The reason that I suggest a label, is that this goes into where it is mounted by the desktop. And, of course, replace that “username” with your login user.

I create a symbolic link (this time as myself in a terminal)


ln -s /run/media/username $HOME/media

And then, when it is mounted by desktop, it will show up as “media/MyPictures” under my home directory.

3

If it is entirely for backup purposes and only to be used with Linux, use gparted and format the whole disk as ext2. When gparted launches it will show your computer’s partitions but just select the dropdown in the top right to find the external hard drive. You will need to delete any existing formating and then format the disk as ext2. Give it a name at the same time if you wish; I have more than one backup which I alternate - so giving them names helps to identify them.

Ext2 will preserve all the Linux attributes whereas NTFS will not. However, Ext2 is not suitable for use if you intend to edit files directly on the disk rather than just back them up and restore them. Use Ext4 in that case.