Changing a read only file system to write

[Bill Davidsen]

Jim wrote:
> I have a 32gb SD card that is partition with a fat32 and is read only, I want to
> make the SD card a Linux boot, but I need to get rid of the Fat32.
>
> How would I do it with Gparted. ?

You wouldn't.

I think you have two issues here, wrong type and read-only. Since that's 
unlikely to be a f/s issue, I'm guessing that your SD card has a little "write 
protect" switch on it, some of mine do, often on the full size SD carrier which 
the microSD plugs into.

Format with:
   mke2fs /dev/sdN
where you replace N with the device name of the SDcard slot.

Note: you do **NOT** want journaling on an SDcard, it puts a lot of wear on one 
part of the card, and eliminating seek time for speed is not an issue. You can 
read about extended options, playing around with the stripe stuff to get 32k or 
64k writes helps on some cards, although generally not much.

There are people who like other filesystems for SDcards, Google for the 
discussions if you wish.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot