Can't use "ln" on external hard drive

[ycai]

On a fedora core 6 (linux kernal 2.6.18-1.2869.fc6) machine (Dell Dimension E521), using external hard drive (USB, West Digital My Book 500GB).

Do the following operation:
cd /media/MY_BOOK/
/media/MY_BOOK/>ls
Mac WD_Windows_Tools autorun autorun.inf tmp
cd tmp
/media/MY_BOOK/tmp>ls
test
/media/MY_BOOK/tmp/>cp test test1
/media/MY_BOOK/tmp/>ln test test2
ln: creating hard link `test2' to `test': Operation not permitted


So it seems cp is fine, but ln has problem. I did those as su.

Is there any idea of how to create hard link on this external drive ? thanks!

[Firewing1]

It's probably because the drive is formatted as FAT32 - FAT and it's variants can't handle permissions or links
Firewing1

[ycai]

Thanks a lot. So may I format My book to ext3 or nfs?

[Firewing1]

ntfs is the same story as FAT32 - What I do on my drive is I have a 20GB FAT32 partition for quick Mac/Windows use and the rest a ext3. You can use tools such as ext2ifs to once installed, access the ext3 partitions on the drive.
Firewing1

[ycai]

Thank you very much again. Actually, my question is how do
I format this external hard drive to ext3 or ext2?

[William Haller]

You can't generate a hard link across partitions or drives. If you need to do this, use a symbolic link instead (see the -s option for ln)

[ycai]

Thanks, I've use gparted to partition and format the external hard drive and now everything is ok.