format fat32

[Cyber Source]

no. bios is ok, i ended up hooking it up as a slave to a windows box
again and formatted it with that, then installed ok. I read the man page
on fdisk and it suggested a dd command to get around an issue with the
first 512 bytes but that didnt work either. Would love to know how to
correctly format fat32 from linux, would help alot. here is the snippet
from the man page on fdisk
The  bottom  line is that if you use cfdisk or fdisk to change the size
       of a DOS partition table entry, then you must also use dd to 
zero  the
       first 512 bytes of that partition before using DOS FORMAT to
format the
       partition.  For example, if you were using cfdisk to make a DOS 
parti‐
       tion table entry for /dev/hda1, then (after exiting fdisk or
cfdisk and
       rebooting Linux so that the partition table information is 
valid)  you
       would  use the command "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512
count=1" to
       zero the first 512 bytes of the partition.

       BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL if you use the dd command, since a small
typo  can
       make all of the data on your disk useless.

       For  best results, you should always use an OS‐specific partition
table
       program.  For example, you should make  DOS  partitions  with 
the  DOS
       FDISK program and Linux partitions with the Linux fdisk or Linux
cfdisk
       program.


On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 23:13, Charles Rishel wrote:
> Pete,
> 
> Silly question probably, but did you check the BIOS and ensure that it can 
> use the full drive?
> I have had to flash the bios on a couple of my AMD boxes to accomodate 40GB 
> drives.  BIOS wouldn't recognize over 20GB, and that gave me all kinds of 
> problems.  After flashing BIOS, drive geometry is correctly noted and 
> passed to the OS.. in my case Win98/Linux dual boot.
> 
> Chaz03
> 
> At 02:13 PM 1/4/03 -0500, you wrote:
> >that was just a typo on my part, i am doing it to hda1
> >On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 14:02, deadpoint wrote:
> > > mkdosfs -F32 /dev/hda is not formatting the partition but the whole
> > > drive. you'll have to do something like mkdosfs -F32 /dev/hda1.
> > >
> > > Cyber Source wrote:
> > >
> > > >Can anyone tell me the correct way to successfully format a fat32
> > > >partition in Linux? I have a drive, 80GB which my dos disks won't
> > > >recognize correctly and I am making a dual boot with windows/Linux. The
> > > >windows part limits to 32GB or wants to format in ntfs, and we cant have
> > > >that!
> > > >I can make the partition easy enough in Linux and I assign the boot
> > > >flag. I then format with the command "mkdosfs -F32 /dev/hda" and it says
> > > >it formats OK. I then install windows and it installs but then when it
> > > >reboots, it fails. I know I am doing something wrong in the formatting
> > > >because this has happened before and my work around then was to hook up
> > > >the 80GB as a slave to a windows box and then format it from within
> > > >windows, then I installed and everything was ok. Am I doing the mkdosfs
> > > >command correctly?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> 
> "If you want others to follow, give them leadership that they can believe in."