pen drive

Forum: Hardware Talk
Topic: pen drive
started by: ahinavchadda

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Posted by ahinavchadda on May 21 2006,07:08

i installed dsl on 256 mb pen drive... i deleted the dsl from it the problem is now a 200 mb partition is not usable i am not able to format it... please help...

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Posted by dougz on May 21 2006,16:37

Best bet is to delete the partition from the drive.  You can do this in DSL (as root, using the fdisk command).

Use the mount tool to make sure your pendrive isn't mounted.  Start a root shell.  Read the fdisk command's help ("M" command).  The "P" command will print (list) partitions on the pendrive.  The "D" command will delete.  The "W" command will write the changes.  Nothing changes on the drive until you write.

Think of a pendrive as a hard disk.  You had to setup partitions and format with filesystems.  Pendrives are the same thing.  You use the same tool (fdisk) and operations on either.

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Posted by dougz on May 22 2006,12:24

Sorry, jumped the gun on that save due to interruption.

After you delete the existing partition, which of course will lose the data, make a single partition covering the whole pendrive and write it to the pendrive.

OK, now you have a partitioned pendrive, but it is not formatted with a filesystem.  In DSL, use the mkdosfs command to format (make a DOS FAT16 filesystem) on your partition.  Use the Net MAN tool for more info on mkdosfs.  Assuming that you have a single partition at /dev/sda1, use

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mkdosfs /dev/sda1

< fdisk manual page >
< mkdosfs manual page >

Of course, you could partition with DOS fdisk or the Windows tools.  You could even use their format.  What fun would that be...  

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Posted by ahinavchadda on May 22 2006,19:57

thanks a lot dougz... it is workin...

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