Re: [gentoo-user] Formating a USB stick

[Mick]

On Thursday 08 October 2009, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Donnerstag 08 Oktober 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@×××.de> wrote:
> > > Am Donnerstag, 8. Oktober 2009 schrieb Mick:
> > >> What's the best way to reformat a USB stick?  It currently shows this
> > >> in
> > >
> > > I remember from SD cards that formatting them with Linux often was to
> > > no avail - Windows wouldn't recognise them, neither with the fs on the
> > > device itself, nor with a partition for the fs.
> > > So in the end I formatted them in Windows, and all was fine. :-/
> >
> > With SD cards, often times there are no partitions. So if you create
> > proper partitions sometimes it won't read in other devices/computers.
> > (in linux terms that means you would format /dev/sda not /dev/sda1)
>
> I have seen a lot of sd cards - anmd they all had a 'real' table with one
> partition - sdX1.
>
> Except for cards that were removed from devices without shutdown/unmounting
> first. In that case linux was not able to find a valid partition table.

I formatted it using MSWindows.  Then checked with sfdisk and fdisk and the 
same errors (of "partition 1 extends past end of disk" and physical/logical 
endings mismatch) came up.

Running parted shows no problems what-so-ever:
====================================
Model: Ut163 USB2FlashStorage (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1011MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      32.3kB  1011MB  1011MB  primary  fat16        boot
====================================

Perhaps parted is more compatible with the MSDOS ways of interpreting disk 
geometry?
-- 
Regards,
Mick