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Creating and formatting partitions

Creating & formatting partitions in Porteus

There are two ways to do things in Porteus. Using a GUI (graphical User Interface) or from a console prompt. If you prefer using a GUI then you can use gparted or the kde partition manager, which take care of creating and modifying partitions.

Creating partitions from a console:

There is a built in application to modify your partition table in Porteus. It is called cfdisk and gives you a CUI (console user interface) to manage your partition through. Simply open your console and type: cfdisk

Another built in function for modifying partitions is called fdisk which also uses a CUI. The benefit of fdisk is that it can be called from a script. You should know the path of your USB device before using this option which you can get from typing: fdisk -l at console. Once you know the path of your USB device you would start fdisk by typing: fdisk /dev/sdb where sdb is the path of your usb. Don't include the number on the end (for example /dev/sdb1) as you will need to modify the entire devices partition table. After starting fdisk you can get a list of commands by typing: h [NEED CONFIRMING]

Formatting partitions from a console:

The example here will use /dev/sdb as the USB device. You should change this to suit your setup.

Formatting partition to FAT32

# mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb1

Formatting a partition to ext2

# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdb1