Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

@Quindor: I believe there are still some patent minefields related to any potential 3rd party implementation of exFat.

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

I am a linux noob, but I will save this post, thanks a lot for your advice.

Just a question though, if format a microSD in NTFS, would the N900 recognise it?

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

No, the n900 assumes the microSD is formatted FAT, and will fail to automatically recognize/mount it on boot/insert. (For instance my microSD is ext3, I have to mount it manually in Xterm)


If you or someone else compiles the necessary kernel modules, you *may* be able to manually mount the microSD, but this is deeply in "at your own risk" territory.

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

go1fish,

You mentioned that you have an ext3 microSD card (I assume it's 100% ext3 and not a small fat partition and a large ext3 as is recommended by Easy Debian for automounting) that you have to mount manually in Xterm - can you tell us how you go about mounting it in Xterm? Have you noticed any other inconveniences besides the mounting not being automatic? Have you tried to automate this process in anyway? I know in regular linux you have some init scripts in which you can systematically put such a mount command but I'm not so familiar with the Maemo flavored linux...
Thanks

-=AC=-

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

mount -t ext3 /dev/mmcblk1p1 /media/mmc1 or something like that. There are init scripts in /etc/init.d, not sure exactly how they work and don't have a device to test on.

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

Pure speculation, but wouldn't modifying /etc/fstab accordingly help the N900 to automatically recognize/mount the drive as ntfs?

something like replacing this line:
with:
Warnings:

• I don't know enough about ntfs-3g to know which flags it can except
• It is not recommended that you try this directly on your N900 (or at all).
  
• If you are crazy enough to try this, backup all of your data.

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

Mine is ext2 and I use:
mount -t ext2 -o noatime,nodiratime /dev/mmcblk1p1 /media/mmc

The noatime,nodiratime is to reduce wearing out the SD card. I have been mounting it by hand in the xterm. I reboot so seldom that I haven't got around to automating yet.

The annoyance is that the file tracker ignores it when it isn't automatically mounted, so the tracker has to be restarted after the SD card is mounted.

Just substitute ext3 for ext2.

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

I only use the ext3 partition for my chroot, and the easy debian scripts handle the mounting for me whenever I try to do something with the chroot.

Normally you would be able to edit fstab to make the thing automount to, but as I understand it fstab gets regenerated at boot.

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

That's disappointing.

The timestamp on my /etc/fstab is 1999-12-31. If I do TZ=UTC,
it is 2000-01-01. hosts and hostname are the same, so I guess that they get clobbered^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hregenerated at boot as well.

Re: Format N900 into NTFS
 

It's not a good idea to use ext2/3 or ntfs on a flash drive.


Instead use JFFS2.
This filesystem is designed for flash drives and prolongs the service life of the flash drive by using some sort of software wear leveling.

The 256 MB partition on a N8x0 device is using JFFS2 by default.
So the kernel on the device should be able to read the filesystem out of the box.