# When creating a backup image, can you use NTFS?



## big_dirk (Feb 17, 2006)

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?


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

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


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## big_dirk (Feb 17, 2006)

Raisltin Majere said:


> 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?


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

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


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## DeepSeaDoc (Feb 19, 2006)

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.


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## DeepSeaDoc (Feb 19, 2006)

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


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## big_dirk (Feb 17, 2006)

DeepSeaDoc said:


> 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  thanks TiVo UK community!


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

big_dirk said:


> 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.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

cwaring said:


> 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


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

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


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

cwaring said:


> 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.


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## big_dirk (Feb 17, 2006)

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.


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