Reformatting ext3

[TheBlackSun]

I have a bunch of partitions currently formatted as ext3 with custom ext3 settings such as different journaling methods and volume labels. I want to either erase or reformat each partition so that i can install a fresh version of Ubuntu 8.10. Is there a way to reformat each ext3 partition while keeping its customized options or should i just erase it all? What would be the cleanest method of erasing all the contents of the partitions?

[taurus]

If you want to wipe clean the partitions, you can use gparted (System -> Administration -> Partition Editor) from Ubuntu LiveCD.

[lensman3]

You can just format over it.

1) Umount the paritions you want to format "umount /dev/sdxx"

2) /sbin/mkfs.ext3 -v /dev/sdxx" (Do this command for each of the partitions. One of the options on mkfs is to write blanks onto the disk, but that can take a loooong time.

3) Then remount the partitions using "mount /dev/sdxx /<mount point>" and also update the /etc/fstab file so the partition will mount automatically during boot.

I would suggest that you format the new disks using the new ext4 format. It appears to be more robust and you can defrag the disks. It is also a journaling file system. The format command is "/sbin/mkfs.ext4".

To see all the options for mkfs, then do "man mkfs.ext3" and "man mkfs.ext4". It is OK to mix and match file system types.

[TheBlackSun]

Thanks for the replies. I really didn't want to have to use mkfs.ext3 since it will lose my volume labels, mount options, and journaling method; however, there seems to be no easy way and upgraded to ext4 does sound like a good idea to me. I was not aware that it was prime time already. I guess i'll go with a Jaunty install and ext4.