USB Drive - create Ext alongside Windows partitions?

[Ydnaroo]

I've got a AX86U on Merlin 3004.388.9_2 with a 500GB NVMe SSD drive on USB. It was set up in Windows using MBR, formatted as NTFS and shared over SMB. I've created a 20GB unused area on the drive and would like to create Ext partitions to use for a swap file and have a play with Tailmon and maybe other scripts.

I've looked at the GitHub Disk formatting Wiki and cannot see any way to do this using the router, it seems to be the whole drive or nothing. Is it possible to set up an Ext partition alongside the existing partition? I am able to backup the drive and start from scratch, maybe creating the Ext partitions first if necessary. I'd like to be able to retain the ability to remove the drive from the router and access the 'NAS' partition from Windows. Can anyone help?

 

[ColinTaylor]

If you can backup the contents of the drive and format it from scratch that would be the easiest way. If you don't want to do that I could walk you through manually formatting the unused space.

To start afresh just SSH into the router and run amtm. Type fd (Format disk) and answer the questions about partitioning and formatting the drive. It should be self explanatory.

EDIT: I suggest you make the first partition NTFS if you want it to be readable in Windows PCs.

 

[Ydnaroo]

If you can backup the contents of the drive and format it from scratch that would be the easiest way. If you don't want to do that I could walk you through manually formatting the unused space.

To start afresh just SSH into the router and run amtm. Type fd (Format disk) and answer the questions about partitioning and formatting the drive. It should be self explanatory.

Thanks for the reply. I'll try the second option tomorrow and let you know how I get on. The data is already backed up and I can do without the share for a while. Thanks again.