Score:1

Does partitioning or formatting a partition on an external hdd on ubuntu erase the whole disk?

kz flag

I have my external HDD formatted as ntfs for windows as i have dual boot and it has important data on it in addition i have plenty of empty space on it and wish to use part of it for Linux usage, so my question is whether formatting a partition as ext4 erase the whole disk i already have an empty partition of about 100gb. thanks in advance.

guiverc avatar
cn flag
Have a look at your drive; it's very rare for a whole drive to have no partition table (*though it was common back in 1980s before windows & GNU/Linux which default to partitions*). Usually a *file-system* such as NTFS is place on a partition (eg. SDA is a device; SDA1 is the first partition on that device). If you format a device (SDA) you lose everything on the device, if you only use a partition (eg. SDA1) then you only wipe/create-new on the partition. Windows by default uses partitions not the drive itself (do note labels such as C: maybe partitions, drives or more - look at the detail)
Score:1
sa flag

Formatting a partition as ext4 only formats the selected partition. It does not erase the whole disk.

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