After looking back over this, I don't think I did a good job answering your question, so I'll try again. I answered what I thought you asked rather than what you actually asked. I do that sometimes.

When you crank up Gparted, you'll notice a drop down in the upper right corner. This is a list of storage devices connected to your PC. You will see a list of your internal hard drives and any external USB storage devices, like pen drives or external USB hard drives.

As you can see on this system, I have 3 storage devices listed as sda, sdb, sdc (this is a Linux convention). There's a 150g internal drive (sda), a 40g internal drive (sdb) and a 1gig USB thumb/pen drive (sdc).



I select the 1g pen drive (sdc) and the display shows the size, space used and the file system on the device. My little 1g pen drive uses fat16 and there's 320meg of data on it.



To format my drive to ext3, I click the Partition menu and select format to ..ext3.



One thing to note is that operations in Gparted can be stacked (queued) and Gparted will not carry out any operations until I click the green check at the top. Notice the operation to format my drive to ext3 is pending until I click the green check.



Once I click the green check, I'm asked to confirm and all pending operations are carried out.



Now my pen drive (device sdc) is formatted to ext3 and ready to go in Linux.



After connecting a USB storage device like a pen drive or a 1TB external drive, you'll see it in the drop down box. You simply select the storage device to work with from the drop down. Then from the Partition menu, format to ..(whatever file system) and then click the green check to commit. That's it.

Using Gparted is actually a pretty straight forward process. I know that Linux can be a little daunting at first but it's really a very nice OS.

Anyway, hope that actually answered the question and helped a little.

Yes that helped. Thanks.

And I wanted to say something else but I forgot.

edit- I remember what I wanted to say. lol

People always told me that Linux is hard and confusing but then when tried the Ubuntu live CD I thought it was all very straight forward.

But that was not the reason for this edit.
I found out that you can format to ext2 in a programme called partition magic on windows. And I happen to have it installed. It seems just as straight forward as your picture tutorial of gparted. But it's an old version and doesn't recognise pendrives. It does see my USB harddrive, but not any pendrives.

Well, that's a bummer.

I've used Partition Magic in the past and it seemed to be a good program. You must have an older version that doesn't support pen drives. Most of time, I just used fdisk and format commands in Windows. I never really had the need to format as ext2 in Windows.

There are several live Linux distros which include gparted. Puppy Linux is a nice tool for formatting and data recovery, on both Windows and Linux boxes.

As with the Gparted Live CD, all you need to do is download the Puppy Linux ISO file, burn it to a CD (as a bootable ISO) and then boot with the newly created CD. Puppy is very fast and it runs completely from memory so nothing gets installed on your drive.

I've downloaded the gparted live CD. All I need to do is start up my computer with the Live CD in the CD rom drive and then it will be the same as with Ubuntu?

I hope it works. Ubuntu needed to be installed or otherwise it wouldn't boot.

Yes, as long as you burn it as an bootable ISO image, it will boot and run directly from the CD. Nothing has to be installed. Make sure you don't just burn the ISO to the CD as a data file or it won't boot. Make sure you burn it as a ISO image.

All Live CDs will run from the CD without installing. It can be a little slow running some large distros from the CD but that's not a problem with Gparted Live or Puppy live. They run fast.

I usually double click on the .iso and then Img Burn will burn it?

Ubuntu wouldn't run without installing. I have XP and Vista double booted and think that might be it. After installing something from the live CD I could boot from the live CD.

And it doesn't work.

I'm sure I've burned it properly. I'm not as dumb as I make out to be. When looking at what's on the CD it shows files and folders.
Same problem as with the Ubuntu live CD. When I boot up my computer it just asks me if I want to boot XP or Vista. No other options and when I just wait what happens when I do nothing it will just boot XP.

And to make matters worse, the manufacturer just sent me a copy of the manual as answer to my email. But the answer isn't in there, that's why I emailed them.

I do have a 50 GB USB HDD lying here that isn't mine. Do you think the owner would mind terribly if I formatted it and he lost his data?

Well, there are two main reasons why it wouldn't boot.

1) Check to see that your BIOS is set to boot from the CD 1st? Many modern systems also have a boot menu (F12 or something like that) otherwise, you'll need to specify your CD/DVD as the first boot device in the BIOS.

2) You burned the CD as a data file rather than an ISO image. Which program did you use to burn the ISO?

Other than a bad CD or Burn, those would most likely be the reason it didn't boot.

Oh, I see you are using a package called img burn. Not sure what double clicking an ISO gives you but one would think an app called "Img Burn" would properly burn an ISO image by default.

Looking on their website, the menu option you want is write image file to disk.



More than likely, you've burned it properly with Img Burn.

Are you sure your PC is set to look in the CD/DVD drive as the first item in your boot device order?

From what you are describing, it sounds like the system is never checking the CD/DVD drive to see if there is a bootable disk there. Check the "Boot Order" menu in your BIOS (normally F2 or some other function key). Set the CD to the first boot device and the Hard Drive as the 2nd boot device. If your BIOS supports a boot menu (F12 perhaps), you can override the BIOS settings and boot the CD from that menu.

Once you set the drive order properly, no matter how many boot partitions you have on your internal hard drive, the PC should check the CD and if it's bootable, it should boot from the CD drive. If there is no boot disc in the CD/DVD drive, it will continue on to boot from the internal hard drive (or whatever device you have selected second under "boot order" in your BIOS).

You are not required to install anything from a live CD to make it boot. That's why it's called a Live CD. Actually, you don't even need an internal hard drive connected to the PC to boot from a Live CD.

Changed the BIOS. That was a first time for me. Someone showed me how a BIOS worked once 7 years ago.
Then the gparted CD booted. Got all scary with having to choose a langue and keyboard, I get scared that when back in windows my keyboard all of a sudden is set to Romanian. lol

Managed to format the pendrive to ext2. Plug it into de TV device that tells me that the pendrive isn't supported because the TV device only supports ext2/3 and fat16/32. Yes you're reading it right. So I yell to the device and tell it not to lie!

At this point I have lost all hope of getting my plan, of plugging in a large USB HD for back up, to work. But I figure I will just try one last thing and format to ext3.

This time the TV device does swallow it and it's currently copying a movie. I don't know how large the file is though, but guess I can find out later by booting up gparted again and see if the used space is bigger then 4GB.

Fingers crossed it is.

Well, at least I'm a lot wiser now and this will save me the money of the HDD I'm not gonna buy anymore.

ext3 sort of works, BUT as soon as you unplug the pendrive it's wiped and needs to be formatted again. Even with the TV device turned off.

Thanks so much for your help GnuTux, and also saulgoode (There are not many that can write such clear tutorials as you do . No offense GnuTux, your tut was good too otherwise I couldn't have done it your way. ).

Well Darn!! Two steps forward and one step back.

So, the ext3 formatted pen drive gets trashed after copying the movie over?

That's a bummer.

Is there any kind of "safe removal" option for USB storage devices connected to the TV capture unit? The reason I asked is that it's a good practice to flush the write buffer on USB storage devices to ensure all data has been written to the device before it's removed. Windows and Linux both have a "safe removal" option to ensure just that. It's not always necessary to use the "safe removal" option, if you wait long enough after the copy to ensure all the data has been written to the device but it's still good practice.

My guess is that is not your problem, though. I suspect the version of embedded Linux on your TV device is buggy with USB storage devices formatted in any other format than Fat16/32 (which was the case in older versions of Linux). As I mentioned earlier in this thread, when doing some research on these devices, I noticed several manufacturers stating that their device only supported Fat32 for external USB devices and many were limited to ~500g as well.

When you wear out your current TV device (which might not be long considering the rate you crank out video tuts ), you can ensure the next one you get supports NTFS formatted USB storage devices.

You know, you could always sell your device on eBay and purchase an updated device with the proceeds. It's a thought.

At least you know now and you can avoid buying something that will not do what you need.

Oh it does everything I need, it's great, but the HDD is just 320GB. And with a movie being 6-8 GB it fills up rather quickly. You can put a larger HDD in it but it will void the warrenty. So we'll wait with that until the warrently runs out. There are some other back-up options I can use, but this was my first choice because it would have been by far the easiest.

If needed I can make a network connection with my laptop and back up that way. It's pretty impractical with the way things are set up here so I'm not gonna bother until I absolutely run out of space.

This TV device was my only choice. It was the only recorder/digital decoder that my cable company supports.

And to answer your question, no there isn't a safe removal option. I was surprised by it. I figured turning the device off would be enough. Besides if I've been able to play a movie from USB, doesn't that mean that all data has been written? Or is it more complicated then that?

Sorry. I wasn't clear. I was talking about buying an external USB hard drive that wouldn't do what you need.


Oh, I didn't realize your device was somehow tied to your cable company. I thought it was a stand alone capture device like these. It doesn't really matter what the source device is with these units. They can record from satellite TV, cable TV, a camera or from any other video source.


Well, what kind of file do you end up with on the USB device that is formatted as Fat32? In other words, when you just copy a small clip to the Fat32 pen drive and look at the file on your PC, is it an MPEG, AVI or some other format?

Can this stuff not be copied and burned to a 8 GB DVD disk. They hold 8.5 GB's of storage and can be played back on any stand alone.
avi can be burned as data format..

Yes, it's a similar device as the ones on ebay. Guess there is just less choice here. I actually thought that 320 GB would fit a lot more so I didn't think there would ever be a need for an USB HDD attached to it.

It are .ts files. They play with VLC player. Better quality then DVD.

Molly, If I burn .ts files, no standalone player is gonna play them. Plus if I get a network I can play from my computer so burning it won't be needed.

How long did you wait after saving the video to the pendrive before unplugging it? Depending upon the device, copying six gigs of data to a pendrive might take over an hour -- even a fast pendrive is going to take over a minute for each gig of data.

EDIT: Note that these long delays are owing to limitations of the pendrive device; writing to a USB (2.0) harddisk, you should expect a rate of about one gig every 15 seconds or thereabouts.

okay...
BTW I burn Video_TS files almost every day on to DVD disks and they play beautifully. I convert from avi and when converted they are Audio_Ts and Video_Ts. I leave both folders together then burn the Video_TS.... They would be VOB files.

Not that long. It took about 15 minutes to copy the file. give or take 5 minutes, I didn't time it. Then I played a bit, say 5 minutes and then waited 1 minute before unplugging. The whole movie seemed to be on it because I also tested if fast forward worked properly when playing the movie from the pendrive.

Have to add that when I unplugged the USB after copying a video clip of 4 minutes (about 250MB) the pendrive wasn't wiped.

Sounds like you may need to experiment a little more. Maybe try copying over a 3gig file and then a 5gig file, see if they play until the end on the pendrive and then remove the device to see if the video was properly stored on there (and as Saul said, give it plenty of time complete copying before removing the pendrive).

You really should download the live Puppy Linux disk I posted a link to and boot from that. It's a full Linux OS that runs from ramdisk, so it's very fast, even when booting from the CD. It has Gparted pre-installed and you can also use it to browse the pendrive after you copy over the video. It's the perfect distro for this kind of thing.

Puppy Linux Screenshot