Linux partition on external hard drive

[RisseN]

Hi All,

Im a first time Linux user so please keep my extremely limited experience level in mind.

I have a Debian based linux distro setup on a bootable usb drive. Meaning that I dont actually have Linux installed on my PC, but can run linux when I choose to by booting to this drive.

I would like to do the following but am not entirely sure how:

1. Are all external hard drives compatible with linux once formatted correctly even if it doesn't specifically indicate that it is compatible. Im looking at this drive in particular: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=470 but am open to something else if it isn't compatible.
2. Once I get the external hdd I would like to partition half of it to be used by Linux and the other half for windows. Note I dont actually want Linux installed on the drive, I just want it formatted correctly for storage with a linux compatible file system. Do I create a partition on it in windows 7 and then go over to Linux and do the rest? Do I actually format that 2nd partition in windows first or just create the partition? What do I then do in linux and where?
3. I have several files, docs etc on my windows 7 machine that I would like to move to the new linux partition on the external hdd. How would I copy them over since the partition wont be readable in windows?

Many thanks for any help. Im sure these are probably fairly basic questions. Thanks for the patience.

 

[ponder]

1 . Yes
2. Just use Gparted and create both the windows & linux fs partitions from there, it will do everything you need.
3. Erm, you get drivers for windows to read/write Ext file systems. That said I don't really trust them.
http://www.ext2fsd.com/
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/08/access-ext4-ext3-or-ext2-partitions-in.html
http://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/

I generally just use DiskInternals Linux Reader.

Note that these windows utils will only read/write Ext based file systems so make sure you use those for linux.

 

[redarrow]

1. Any standard USB mass storage device will work fine, I've never actually seen an external HDD that doesn't use that standard so I wouldn't be worried about it not working.

2. It's probably easiest to create the Windows partition from Windows and just set it to whatever size you want, then from Linux create the second partition using the remaining space. You could of course also create both partitions from either OS although I think on Windows you'd need some additional software. From Linux you can do this with the command line tools (fdisk) that come with most distros. There are also some neat GUI partitioning tools for Linux, personally I've used 'gparted' quite a bit.

3. Linux has no trouble reading NTFS partitions so the easiest is to simply mount your Windows partition on Linux and copy the files that way.

For what it's worth, if you're only planning to use the external drive for storing media files or documents (in other words nothing Linux specific) theres no particular reason you couldn't just use an external drive with an NTFS partition.


Beaten..

 

[RisseN]

Thanks for the replies,

gparted looks very cool, but it seems like perhaps I dont even need it. Am I understanding correctly that while in linux I would be able to use the external ntfs hard drive without any hassles? So I could save new files, open files etc on the ntfs hdd all while within linux?

Would the only reason for creating a linux partition be if I were using it for linux specific files?

thanks again.

 

[ginggs]

Am I understanding correctly that while in linux I would be able to use the external ntfs hard drive without any hassles? So I could save new files, open files etc on the ntfs hdd all while within linux?

Yes.

Would the only reason for creating a linux partition be if I were using it for linux specific files?

Yes, but I think the only reason to create a linux partition would be if you were only ever going to use the drive on linux.