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USB eveternal harddrive problem 
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theamature
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Post # 266203
Post USB eveternal harddrive problem
i put mepis 8 on my external harddrive, and the gurb boot loader, and i guess it changed my external to to MBR or something, but now i cant out songs and stuff on it, and i cant see it as a drive in "My Computer" on windows, how can i switch it back to whatever it was before the MBR?
Tue Mar 22, 2011 9:35 am
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zeeone
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Post # 266213
Post Re: USB eveternal harddrive problem
Have you tried to boot the machine from the external HD to see if that is what has been done?

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Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:23 pm
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uncle mark
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Post # 266214
Post Re: USB eveternal harddrive problem
theamature wrote:
i put mepis 8 on my external harddrive, and the gurb boot loader, and i guess it changed my external to to MBR or something, but now i cant out songs and stuff on it, and i cant see it as a drive in "My Computer" on windows, how can i switch it back to whatever it was before the MBR?


Assuming you let the MEPIS install take the whole drive, the ext3 file system won't be recognized by Windows. You'll need to manipulate your partitions and create a FAT or NTFS part that can be seen by Win if you want to use the drive as both an OS drive and an external storage drive.
Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:35 pm
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theamature
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Post # 266383
Post Re: USB eveternal harddrive problem
uncle mark wrote:
theamature wrote:
i put mepis 8 on my external harddrive, and the gurb boot loader, and i guess it changed my external to to MBR or something, but now i cant out songs and stuff on it, and i cant see it as a drive in "My Computer" on windows, how can i switch it back to whatever it was before the MBR?


Assuming you let the MEPIS install take the whole drive, the ext3 file system won't be recognized by Windows. You'll need to manipulate your partitions and create a FAT or NTFS part that can be seen by Win if you want to use the drive as both an OS drive and an external storage drive.



i dont want the os on it anymore, i just want to format it back to original settings how do i do that?
Wed Mar 23, 2011 6:55 pm
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richb
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Post # 266384
Post Re: USB eveternal harddrive problem
in konsole as root fdisk /dev/sdx where x is the drive letter. be careful to use the right drive designation as this command formats the drive.
eg if you have one drive in your system, the pluggable drive is b so it would be fdisk /dev/sdb.

Use with caution.

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Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:00 pm
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uncle mark
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Post # 266387
Post Re: USB eveternal harddrive problem
theamature wrote:
i dont want the os on it anymore, i just want to format it back to original settings how do i do that?


You should be able to access it from the Windows Control Panel> Admin Tasks> Disk Management dialog and format it from there.

If not, then I would suggest using the GParted Live CD.
Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:29 pm
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uncle mark
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Post # 266388
Post Re: USB eveternal harddrive problem
richb wrote:
in konsole as root fdisk /dev/sdx where x is the drive letter. be careful to use the right drive designation as this command formats the drive.
eg if you have one drive in your system, the pluggable drive is b so it would be fdisk /dev/sdb.

Use with caution.


While he is quite unclear, reading between the lines I think he installed to the external, and wants to reformat it back to NTFS so his Win install can utilize it for data storage. He wouldn't be able to format the Linux drive while running Linux.
Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:32 pm
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richb
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Post # 266389
Post Re: USB eveternal harddrive problem
uncle mark wrote:
richb wrote:
in konsole as root fdisk /dev/sdx where x is the drive letter. be careful to use the right drive designation as this command formats the drive.
eg if you have one drive in your system, the pluggable drive is b so it would be fdisk /dev/sdb.

Use with caution.


While he is quite unclear, reading between the lines I think he installed to the external, and wants to reformat it back to NTFS so his Win install can utilize it for data storage. He wouldn't be able to format the Linux drive while running Linux.

I guess I misunderstood. certainly not if he is running Linux from that external.

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Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:37 pm
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