> It's not a dumb question but the answer is that you should put a partition on the disk. The partition table does more than just carve up the disk. Even if you are using the entire disk, create a single partition on it first and format that with whatever file system you plan to use. I know it carves up the disk, has flags indicating the partition type and other flags such as the boot flag. I suppose in the no-partition-table scenario Linux must use some sort of detection to figure out what file system is being used. Is there something else I'm missing? > Seriously look at using a volume manager like LVM2. It makes file system maintenance so much easier. I probably will next time I do a clean install, but I'm not sure what it would bring to a single external USB disk scenario. I plug these disks in once a month, rsync my family photos, videos, music, code and important documents, and unplug them again. -- Michael