Trying to format my new wd external to fat file system but get an erorr

[candlightandskull]

hello
this is the error.

why do i get it? should i return the drive to the shop?

tnx

[Aragorn]

@candlightandskull

why do i get it?

It says the drive is busy, and that it is mounted somewhere. You should not attempt to format a mounted filesystem.

Also, bear in mind that vfat only supports partitions up to 4 GiB in size. If you want the filesystem to be bigger, then you should use exfat. Make sure you have the exfatprogs package installed.

[candlightandskull]

thank you…
one more question for now…

my local hard drive should also be formatted to exfat? is it better? [at the moment it is ext4]
i’m not talking about the local ssd…

tnx

[Phemisters]

@candlightandskull

my local hard drive should also be formatted to exfat? is it better? [at the moment it is ext4]

exFAT is a sensible choice for a partition which might be accessed by different OSs (e.g. MS Windows), especially for an external drive which might later get plugged into another system. But for a Linux-only partition ext4 is a sensible choice and you really don’t want to make it exFAT.

[Aragorn]

@candlightandskull

my local hard drive should also be formatted to exfat? is it better? [at the moment it is ext4]

It depends on what you want to store there.

• The operating system — i.e. GNU/Linux — should always be installed on a Linux-native filesystem, and this includes /home. ext4 is at present time still the default in Manjaro, but there are other options, such as btrfs or xfs.

• If you want to have a filesystem upon which you can store things that you wish to share with Microsoft Windows on the same computer — i.e. a dual-boot scenario — then exfat is the best option for that filesystem.

• If you have no need for (sharing with) Microsoft Windows, then best is a Linux-native filesystem, because exfat does not support POSIX permissions or file ownership.

• When sharing files between GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows by way of a network, the filesystem is irrelevant, because what matters then is the filesharing protocol — commonly Samba/CIFS, because Windows does not support the UNIX-native NFS protocol.