No left sapce on /mount/vl-hot/sdx/volx?

[acidbee]

Hi.
I'm experiencing some problems with removable hard disks: it says there's no left space on devices (0.0 kb), but I'm sure there is more space. On the first external hd I actually filled every mb, but after that I removed files and directories: nevertheless, if I try to copy even a txt file it says the disk is full.
On the second device I never reached the whole capacity, but I've got the same problem.
Oh, I'm running VL 5.8 STD.

[nightflier]

Please enter this line in a terminal:
df -h
and post the result.

[acidbee]

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7              19G   18G  586M  97% /
/dev/hda3              15G   14G  1.1G  93% /home
tmpfs                 219M     0  219M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1              19G   19G   20M 100% /mnt/vl-hot/sda/vol1
/dev/sdb1             187G  186G  284M 100% /mnt/vl-hot/sdb/vol1

[nightflier]

According to the output, sda1 and sdb1 are at 100% capacity. EXT filesystems reserve some space for root, the "Avail" space that shows up is probably not accessible as a normal user.

You can try writing to the drive as root and see if it works. It is also possible to change the filesystem parameters. Research "tune2fs" (google or "man tune2fs").

[acidbee]

It's very strange cause on other systems (windows and other linux machines) the free space is seen in a proper way. Now I'll try and see if it works better as root..

[Joe1962]

I have seen this kind of problem before when using pendrives with FAT filesystems alternately between Windows and Linux. Best fix is to do a full format on Windows. That said, I haven't seen this for a long time now, probably happened back when I was using VL 5.8. I suppose it could also be caused by not unmounting correctly in either OS.

[acidbee]

In fact I'm using VL 5.8, and it's rather easy to imagine someone didn't unmount the disks in a proper way.
BTW, on a mp3 stick it's said there are 0 kb available, but on windows it says around 350 mb. On an external Hd I've got 19 mb available on Linux and a dozen GBs on windows. On another external hd I read 11 mb on Linux and about 450 on windows.
IS there another way to solve this problem (something different from formatting the disks on a windows machine, wich is what you suggested.. if I didn't misunderstand)?
Thanks in adv.

[Joe1962]

In my case I don't remember which OS showed the most space, but I think it wasn't usable anyway. FAT filesystems are very susceptible to damage, which is why I do a full format once in a while to fix things. You can format FAT in Linux, but I tend to prefer native formatting whenever possible, given the fact that MS isn't very forthcoming whith implementation info. That said, FAT has been around long enough for plenty of info to be published. I have been reformatting my pendrives in FAT32 for a while now with pretty good results. I say reformat because, surprisingly, they tend to come factory formatted to FAT16 even for the 1 or 2 GB sizes. They also sometimes come without a partition table (like floppy disks) and I create one, though this has actually proven to be dangerous on some (mostly older) models.

[acidbee]

Yes..thanks.
The problem is for ex. that my mp3 reader has some config files and I don't know if it's a  firmware issue or something written upon the 2gb memory.. so I'd prefer not to harm the device, right?
That's why I'd prefer not to format the drive.
For what the 2 hard disks are concerned... well, one is about 20 gb, the other one about 100.. it would be rather boring if I start and move the files one by one... so I hoped there's another way (I don't know, working on the volum system informations or..).
Thanks.