When creating a backup image, can you use NTFS?

[big_dirk]

Hi all,

I am trying to back up my TiVo disk, to an IDE hard drive which is NTFS (it has Windows XP on it) although Steve Conrad's guide uses a FAT32 drive to backup to, is it possible to do it using an NTFS drive with the command :

"mfsbackup -l 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc"

As when I do the above I get an error message about a drive being read only.

After a brief dmesg I found that with the drive I have being NTFS, this caused it to become read only.

Can anyone help me please?

[Raisltin Majere]

Nope, Linux can't write to NTFS.

Best bet is to make a small partition and format that as FAT, unless you have a spare drive laying around

[big_dirk]

Nope, Linux can't write to NTFS.

Best bet is to make a small partition and format that as FAT, unless you have a spare drive laying around

OK I have a 4Gb spare I can use, but I booted with a Win98 bootdisk in the hope of formatting it to FAT32, but when I typed "format d:" it said "cannot format a network drive" :S

any ideas please?

[Raisltin Majere]

boot into xp with the 4gb as slave. click start, run type "diskmgmt.msc" (no quotes) and format the disc from there.

Don't boot into winows with tivo drive attached you'll kill it :eek:

[DeepSeaDoc]

Western Digital has software that will allow you to reformat an NTFS drive to Fat32. I know because I had the same problem you did and just five minutes ago reformatted a 160GB drive to fat 32 keeping the full disk size. Let me know if you are using a western digital drive and I can send you an .iso of the cd. It is freeware that comes with new HDs.

[DeepSeaDoc]

Just checked the software out on a seagate HD and it worked as well. Let me know if you need it.

[big_dirk]

Just checked the software out on a seagate HD and it worked as well. Let me know if you need it.

very kind of you, thank you.

Unfortunately, the drive is a 4Gb Quantum Fireball (how cool a name for a HDD is that?).

I'll try booting to XP then formatting the backup drive as Fat32 through XP's disc management then :D thanks TiVo UK community!

[cwaring]

I'll try booting to XP then formatting the backup drive as Fat32 through XP's disc management then.
I could be wrong, but I don't think it'll let you :) I think XPs disc manager only allows you to format to NTFS.

[Raisltin Majere]

I could be wrong, but I don't think it'll let you :) I think XPs disc manager only allows you to format to NTFS.

Yes, you are wrong :D

[cwaring]

Okay. Well, when I tried it on mine it didn't like it. Maybe I was doing something wrong. It has been known ;)

[Raisltin Majere]

Okay. Well, when I tried it on mine it didn't like it. Maybe I was doing something wrong. It has been known ;)

Sorry Carl, you were kinda right! I didn't explain myself very well. If the drive is already NTFS then you will not be able to change it without deleting the drive first.

[big_dirk]

just to let you know, I managed to format my backup drive as FAT32 (unsure of file system before I connected it) by connecting it to a Win XP computer through Windows Disk Management.