format external drive ext3

[Simon Andrews]

François Patte wrote:

> If you want it linux file system formatted it is quite easy to do
> (remember also that you will loose about 5% if you format in ext3,
> because of the journal, do you need ext3?):

That's not right.  A default journal size on an ext3 drive is 0.4% of 
the drive which is nothing.

The reason you lose 5% of an ext2/3 drive by default is because it is 
reserved solely for use by root.  This is so that if you drive is filled 
by a user you can still go in as root and have some space to help clean 
things up without losing any data.  It also helps to reduce 
fragmentation in your data (which gets much worse as the drive nears 
becoming completely full).

If you don't want to create this reserved space then use the -m flag to 
mke2fs to reduce it as low as you like.

Simon.