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I just received a brand new hard drive that I had ordered the other day. It's a SATA internal drive. The model ID is ST3000DM008.

My plan is to load it up with large files on Windows, and then hook it up to my Linux server.

However, I have never hooked up a brand new drive in a Linux environment. I do know that Linux only recognizes certain file formats.

For what it's worth, my Linux OS is running on a separate hard drive as is, and I'm running Windows 10 on my other computer.

Do I have to format the drive before transferring it over from the Windows environment?

If I remember correctly, I think I read way back that FAT32 is compatible in both environments? But I just read that the largest files you can have in a FAT32 format is 4GB?

Is there any way to preserve the files that I will be putting on it from Windows?

oldboy
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Most likely the new disk is already formatted to NTFS.

You can leave it as is. Both Ubuntu and Windows can use this file system.

But NTFS works slower in Linux than native Linux formats. If this is critical it is better to use a Linux format, like ext4, xfs, btrfs, etc. You won't be able to fix errors on NTFS with Linux.

In general it is not recommended to use NTFS file system on Linux if you don't have Windows there.

Also make sure you turn off Windows properly before you take out the disk. Windows 10 is hibernated when you select "Shutdown".

Pilot6
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  • Awesome, is there any way I could fry or corrupt the drive or the Linux system by plugging in a drive with an incompatible format? Also, can I plug the drive in while the computer is running or are there dangers to that? Should I just plug it in while the system is off? – oldboy Sep 19 '17 at 20:42
  • SATA supports hot plugging, but I don't recommend to check it. It is better to plug in a new HDD when the system is off. – Pilot6 Sep 19 '17 at 20:47
  • Alright, will do. I didn't even know there was a term for it. <33 – oldboy Sep 19 '17 at 20:48
  • So I formatted the drive as NTFS and partitioned the drive as GPT, but, even though it detects the drive on my Linux PC, I'm getting an error when trying to access it which reads... – oldboy Sep 20 '17 at 04:07
  • Error mounting /dev/sdb2 at media/me/LONGSTRINGOFNUMBERSANDCHARACTERSTHATIBELIEVEISHEXIDECIMALCODE: Command-line 'mount-t "ntfs" -o "unhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000" "/dev/sdb2" "media/me/SAMELONGSTRINGASABOVE"' exited with non-zero exit status 14: The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0). Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount. Failed to mount '/dev/sdb2': Operation not permitted. The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume read-only with the 'ro' mount option. – oldboy Sep 20 '17 at 04:07
  • That's what I wrote in the answer. You didn't turn off Windows properly. https://askubuntu.com/questions/145902/unable-to-mount-windows-ntfs-filesystem-due-to-hibernation – Pilot6 Sep 20 '17 at 08:07
  • the issue was that 'quick start' was enabled in windows (i think it reverts to this every time windows is updated?), and therefore it doesn't fully shutdown the computer but puts it into a quasi-hibernation state. is there a way to format the drive as a native linux format while preserving/without deleting the files on the drive?? – oldboy Sep 20 '17 at 20:18
  • No, you can't reformat without losing the data. – Pilot6 Sep 20 '17 at 20:21
  • Ok, then I can't use a native Linux format. The format I use must be compatible with Windows and Linux so that the data can persist – oldboy Sep 20 '17 at 22:17
  • Then leave it in NTFS. You can repair the disk on Windows if you need. – Pilot6 Sep 20 '17 at 22:18
  • Oh, there was no need to repair the disk :) – oldboy Sep 21 '17 at 00:10