USB-stick has been eaten by linux pinguin : (

Forum: USB booting
Topic: USB-stick has been eaten by linux pinguin : (
started by: darkcloud

Posted by darkcloud on Jan. 30 2006,14:13

I wanted to run linux from a usb stick (128mb) so that i could run my laptop witout a harddrive. But when i trew the live cd in it and runned linux and the usb-zip-pen thingie it failed. But the worst is linux can't use it anymore and i can't open or format it in windows either. I tried the fdisk en then mkdosfs but that doesnt work either because when i open it it doens't recongnize any partitions and can't create one either. I also tried the hp tool without suc6.

so i"m really sad now it was the only good stick i had and now its dead i don't care for the data. But it would be great if any lead linux pinguins know a solution to this puzzle. All help aprriciated.

Greetz sad linux noobie

Posted by doobit on Jan. 30 2006,15:42

This is the second or third time I have seen someone reporting this. Maybe the software that is embedded on the USB pen drive is being overwritten somehow with certain drives. I don't see how that would happen, but anyting is possible...

Posted by darkcloud on Jan. 30 2006,16:07

tnx for ur reply atleast someone is reading my stuff .. but do you got any idea on fixin this ? or am i doomed to trow it away and hate linux forevver

Posted by doobit on Jan. 30 2006,17:46

Without actually seeing it...no.
I have installed to four different makes and sizes of pendrives lately, and without any problem, so I don't really know what might have happened to yours.
Does it have a LED that lights up when you plug it in and read data from it?
Try qparted.uci, maybe. Boot from the liveCD, then use myDSL to get qparted. That gives a little more feedback on the partitions.

Posted by ~thc on Jan. 30 2006,18:55

i have seen various pieces of software rendering real harddisks unusable in a very similar way - the conditions for usb pendrives seem to be somewhat worse (i suspect the nonfixed chs mapping of pendrives).

you may try the following:

boot linux in any way. plug in your pendrive. overwrite the first physical sector (aka partition table) of the pendrive with zeros (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 <-- replace 'sda' with your correct device). try reformatting it under windoze.

Posted by darkcloud on Jan. 30 2006,19:03

the led is still working indeed when i try to format it under linux it blinx .. but the linux gives a error and nothing happend.

I can't format it under windows to bad but i will try the other scrip thing u wrote tnx for all the effort guys :;):

and tnx for the explaination cuz im a real linux noob ...

Posted by doobit on Jan. 30 2006,21:18

OK, if the light works and you can see it to "try" to partition it, then you haven't destroyed it. Use cfdisk again and delete all of the partitions that cfdisk shows it has. Then choose "write" in cfdisk. This will leave you with only freespace. Windows or Linux can deal with freespace. Now you can use cfdisk to create a new, single partition. Make a bootable Windows 95 FAT16 partition, and write it again. Now you still need to format it. You can format it as FAT16 in either Windows or Linux. Since you are familiar with Windows, then you might just want to use that, however, it's not hard in Linux.
Open a terminal and type sudo su and enter to get into super user /administrator mode. Then type mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1 if your pendrive is sda1. There is a page in the DSL Wiki that explains how to set up your pen drive's geometry, if you need it.

Posted by Grumpy_Penguin on Jan. 31 2006,21:33

I just purchased a DSM nano itx unit with the bootable pen drive ...it won't boot
what do I do now?

Posted by doobit on Jan. 31 2006,21:45

Quote (Grumpy_Penguin @ Jan. 31 2006,16:33)

I just purchased a DSM nano itx unit with the bootable pen drive ...it won't boot
what do I do now?

I would contact the sales department. What stage does it get to? Do you see the VIA logo screen? Can you enter the BIOS?

Posted by MakodFilu on Feb. 01 2006,01:13

To darkcloud: I don't say this is the solution but... have you checked if the pendrive embedded switch have accidentally changed the setting and is now in the lock/read-only position?

Posted by doobit on Feb. 01 2006,14:49

Good point.

Posted by gabbagandalf on Feb. 18 2006,15:33

i've got the same problem as darkcloud has - only difference: i can see the stick in windows (but only with 243mb of 256mb) and when i mount it in linux it's only 1,48mb large. but i can't mount that 243mb-windows partition in linux - dunno why.
i hope someone has any idea how i could fix that!

Posted by doobit on Feb. 18 2006,17:18

On a 256mb stick, often a small portion is reserved for driver data/etc. and you can't or shouldn't try to write to that part. If you formatted the stick as a FAT partition, then there's no reason Linux wouldn't see it or be able to mount it.
If it's NTSC, or something else, then that's another matter.

Posted by gabbagandalf on Feb. 19 2006,05:04

ok - i figured it out - i had the write protection turned on. now i booted DSL from live-cd and did "install on USB-stick". but then, when i try to boot from usb DSL begins booting and then it says: "couldn't find knoppix filesystem" - kinda strange, because the installation finished without any problems!

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 19 2006,20:08

Try booting with:

dsl frugal nousb2 waitusb

Posted by darkerror05 on Feb. 20 2006,20:31

Quote

Boot DSL from the livecd
Choose Install to pendrive USBHDD from the menu

Enjoy your single-partition DSL/windows USB stick.

this was found in a old topic i think it may fix your problem

Posted by The Prophet on Feb. 23 2006,21:45

I am also having trouble with USB flash drives...

I have tried to do a UBB install on two different flash drived and both installes looked like they worked but they did not really. Now I have two flash drives that are missing 8 megabytes on each. I have not found a way to recover this space.

I tried to overwrite the first physical sector of the pendrive with zeros like some one esle posted
(dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 <-- replace 'sda' with your correct device)
But that did not work.

I have tried cfdisk but I can't figure out how get cfdisk to select my USB device?

Posted by mighty duck on Feb. 28 2006,23:19

I had a similar problem with the usb-zip-pen thing. I sticked it back in, chose "usb-hdd" instead. I entered the letters for my pen and now it is working perfect.

hope that helps you