Change HDD Format

[Bob M]

Ok, I have here a brand new Acer Aspire c-24 desktop that was purchased new a couple of days ago.

It came with Win10 which was promptly disposed of and Mint19.3 installed.

Now this model has a 128GB SSD for the OS or whatever, and a 1 TB data drive.

All was going so well I thought I should do a backup with Timeshift to this 1 TB drive.

Well all was looking good until timeshift advised that the backup drive was formatted NTFS and would have to be reformatted to EXT4.

Now comes the crunch. I installed Gparted to handle the problem but Gparted can’t see the backup drive let alone reformat it.

So the question is “how is it that Mint and timeshift can see the drive but Gparted not?

Is there another program that can reformat NTFS to EXT4?

Thanks

Bob

[RIH]

GParted usually opens on dev/sda to open onto another disk you just need to use the dropdown arrow highlighted below..

[Bob M]

Thanks RIH, all fixed.

[AndyMH]

Couple of tips:

• ext4 partitions created by gparted are owned by root, fine with timeshift (it runs as root), but it will be read-only to you. To fix:

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sudo chown $USER:$USER /wherever_it_mounts

• always give your partitions a label, then mint will mount them at /media/you/mylabel, if you don't have a label it will use the UUID, e.g. /media/you/ddc976e3-bc24-4b8d-9151-a72c9013d3e8, not user friendly.

[Bob M]

Thanks Andy, yes I found I couldn't make or paste a folder to this drive, but there was the timeshift folder.

The code you give "sudo chown $USER:$USER /wherever_it_mounts" does this mean as typed or the name of the user set up upon installation and wherever it mounts does that mean as written or how do I find where it mounts.

As you can see you're dealing with a right dummy here.

[AndyMH]

If you go back into gparted and add a label to the partition, e.g. mylabel (right click on the partition and 'label filesystem') then it will mount at /media/bob/mylabel (you can check in your file manager and guessing that your username is bob), so the chown command would be:

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sudo chown $USER:$USER /media/bob/mylabel

USER is an environment variable that contains your username and $ means the contents of, you can check with echo $USER, e.g.

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andy@T432 ~ $ echo $USER
andy

So, if your username is bob then this is the same:

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sudo chown bob:bob /media/bob/mylabel

The first bob is who owns it and the second bob is which group owns the mount point.

Dummy - no, once you get under the bonnet/hood linux is a steep learning curve, and I'm still learning

[Bob M]

If you go back into gparted and add a label to the partition, e.g. mylabel (right click on the partition and 'label filesystem') then it will mount at /media/bob/mylabel (you can check in your file manager and guessing that your username is bob), so the chown command would be:

Did that but despite gparted saying it was done it retained its old pointless name. It accepted DATA for a new name but changed nothing.

Now what have I stuffed up?

[AndyMH]

I suspect you didn't do edit > apply all operations. When you make a change with gparted you get a window at the bottom of the screen telling you what it will do, but nothing happens until you edit > apply all operations.

[Bob M]

Sorry for the delay getting back on this one guy's but the Wife has been in hospital and the owner of this new computer needed it, so things came to a screaming halt.

Anyway, the wife is home and the friend is returning the computer with a few additional problems.

I realise that this problem may deserve a thread of its own but he assures me his computer now talks to him.

If he clicks an icon a voice tells him what the icon does and if he is typing the voice tells him what key he has pressed.

What he has done this time is anyone's guess.

Stand Down on the voices he was hearing, he'd somehow turned on the screen reader.

[Petermint]

NZ? Ok, I will talk slowly, Bro.

In Gparted, edit apply is the tick icon.

Ext4 has one big advantage over NTFS and other file system, links. This lets a backup program store a snapshot in a small space because identical files are stored only once in the first snapshot. The first snapshot is full size. The next ones have only changed files with unchanged files represented by tiny links. Backups to NTFS have to store everything every time.

To handle Timeshift, use Gparted or Windows or to shrink the NTFS partition by 30 GB then create a 30 GB Ext4 partition. Shrink. Apply. Allocate. Apply.

Generally, moving the end of a partition down is fast and reliable. You skip the backup then trip over the power cable during the shrink and lose all your data

[Bob M]

OK, back to business.

The position now is GParted thinks the 2nd drive has been renamed DATA but the Computer disagrees.

Then the instruction from the Terminal doesn't work either.

[Petermint]

You might have to reboot to get the new name used in the mount point. If the reboot does not work, post the contents of /etc/fstab as that may have mount instructions you have to change.

NZ, the first smoke free country.

[Bob M]

Yep, pulling the reboot trick was first off the ranks but alas was a failure on this occasion.

And what is this For Sale Totalisator Agency Board?

[Petermint]

cat /etc/fstab

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# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/nvme0n1p6 during installation
UUID=adb838ab-4826-f1bb-8b1c-1c6261cb47a9 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro,noatime 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/nvme0n1p1 during installation
UUID=97E7-E377  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
# /home was on /dev/nvme0n1p7 during installation
UUID=33a36f7c-41de-849a-b79415f6fbbb /home           ext4    defaults,noatime        0       2
/swapfile                                 none            swap    sw              0       0

If you need to change it: Backup, backup, sudo xed /etc/fstab, then reboot.

[Bob M]

jeeeeez petermint, you're going to have to put your teeth in to talk to a Kiwi.

[Petermint]

Worked in Wellington for 6 months. I know about NZ blowing air.
Back in the 1990s, I was at the peak of Mount Ruapehu when hot air/steam puffed up out of the snow. So I know when NZ is blowing hot air. In Australia when we want hot air, we just stand at the top of the new parliament house.

[AndyMH]

The position now is GParted thinks the 2nd drive has been renamed DATA but the Computer disagrees.

That one is easy!

With a gpt partition table you have two "names", a partition name - which is what you have and have called it DATA, and a label. As you have no label column in the gparted screenshot you have not assigned a label to the partition. So back to what I said earlier about adding a label...

The partition name was introduced with gpt partition tables, you don't have that option with a legacy partition table, you can only have a label. I have yet to find a use for the partition name.

[Bob M]

No luck so far.

I'll try and get some screenshots see if that helps.

[Bob M]

Starting with how the OS views the subject drive.

And from the Permissions TAB

And how GParted views things

Back after lunch.

[Bob M]

Well I don't know how, but, the label facility on the partition menu which was greyed out appeared, so I called the label "Store".

Then to the Terminal but no luck there.

Any thoughts anyone?