1 Topic by dan (edited by dan 2008-03-08 23:59:00)

  • dan
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Topic: [SOLVED]after formating in ext3/ext2/ntfs, disk is not empty. 4gb used

Hello,

after formating my external WD3000BB 300gb HD in ext3/ext2/ntfs, with ubuntu 7.10, Knoppix 5.1 and finally gparted-livecd-0.3.4-11, the disk is not empty. There are always 4-18 gb used? I also tried to format it under windows, but same results 78mb used space on disk?

then i found some lost+found directory wich i cant delete, because i dont have any rights for.

how can i format it with a clean ext3 filesytem ?


i hope this is right forum, i didnt found anything about similar problems.
thank you in advance
dan

2 Reply by class413

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Re: [SOLVED]after formating in ext3/ext2/ntfs, disk is not empty. 4gb used

Make it more clear, please.
Do you make one partition for the entire disk space?
300GB nominal for the manufacturers, means 300 billions of bytes. The same partition as shown from within an operating system looks about 8% smaller, but this is only because they count 1GiB = 1024x1024x1024 bytes, that is more than 1 billion.

Each filesystem uses some space for its own information. ntfs creates the master file tables, about 5% of the disk space, that is reserved but not marked occupied, however. Ext2 and 3 create their own space, about 5%, reserved for the superuser. You could change this by manual disk formatting in Linux. It seems that other systems (like Reiser4, JFS or XFS) reserve less space than Ext2/3.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by dan

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Re: [SOLVED]after formating in ext3/ext2/ntfs, disk is not empty. 4gb used

ok sorry,

it is meant 300gb nominal. But after formating it in any format the capacity of the disk is about 289.xxx bites (cant remember, will complete it later). This is clear, but Gparted and other windows tools show, that there are 4-18gb of used Space within the 289.xxx bites , so there are only 27x.xxx bites of free space.

i also cant write on the complete disk.

at the moment right now i plugged the hd in a normal pc at the ide port and im formating it under the Windowsinstallation Routine in ntfs, after this i wil try to install Ubuntu on it.


thank you in advance
dan

4 Reply by class413

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Re: [SOLVED]after formating in ext3/ext2/ntfs, disk is not empty. 4gb used

As I wrote before, there is no lost space, it is just "reserved" space.
In Linux installation, this reserved space is around 5% by default. In the case of partitions used for data storage only, you could format them  manually from the command line using the -m option to set the minimum reserved space, i.e. 1%. For system partitions, it is better to keep the defaults.

In the case of ntfs, there are no many options, except the segment size in the MFT, for very experienced users only. Even in that case we can't predict the optimum, and we can't rebuild it later without destroying it. I guess the actual ntfs default options are rather optimal for a general use system. Perhaps other options could be used for special cases (dedicated servers etc).

Of course, to use other than default options, we have to work much more from the command line.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

5 Reply by dan (edited by dan 2008-03-08 23:56:14)

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Re: [SOLVED]after formating in ext3/ext2/ntfs, disk is not empty. 4gb used

Ok, i finally got it. As class413 said, the used space on the disk is normal, it differs on the used filesystems. The disk is now formatted in ext3 under Gparted in a vmware unbuntu virtualisation. I only dont know how to change the read/write rights for the hd, so i could copy my files with the ext2fsd under Windows on it. But for me its ok, my WL500gP Router can handle it and my harddisk runs finally as NAS.

thanks at class413 for the very fast support.
greetings dan