How to format USB drive

12-26-2004	#1 (permalink)
rat007 Linux Newbie Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Brno Posts: 230	How to format USB drive Big Fat Guy brought me new USB pendrive. How can I format it? Can I use a different filesystem than FAT32? (EXTx)

12-26-2004	#2 (permalink)
dylunio Linux Guru Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Cymru Posts: 4,157	To format it (as root): Code: fdisk /dev/sda mkfs -t vfat /dev/sda1 this will make a FAT format od somekind, I'm dot sure which (Ithink FAT32), I'm not suse if you can use something else. dylunio __________________ Registered Linux User #371543! Get force-get May The Source Be With You /dev/null /dev/null2

12-26-2004	#3 (permalink)
rat007 Linux Newbie Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Brno Posts: 230	Thanx, this did FAT32 formating and now it works just fine. Dunno why but the default filesystem on pendrive was strange and didn't allow me to upload more than 20Megs of data even that it's 256M!

11-08-2006	#4 (permalink)
felipe1982 Linux Newbie Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 165	This isn't working for me. I have a 128Mb usb drive that i used to use no problems in linux. After a clean install of suse 10.1, I can't seem to write to it (i checked the write protect, and it is off) when I type fdisk in konsole, this is what I get command not found. How can I format it? I don't really want it mounted anywhere -- i only wanted it formated in FAT. ps - what is the diff b/w fat and vfat? __________________ Visit Felipe Alvarez's website. Linux & Windows is like Motorbikes & Cars...they work in fundamentally different ways...you should pick whichever is appropriate, not pick one and expect it to do everything that the other can do [link]

11-08-2006	#5 (permalink)
Cabhan Trusted Penguin Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Boston, MA, USA Posts: 2,691	You need to be root to use fdisk. I would recommend using cfdisk, though, as it is more user-friendly. VFAT was an extension to FAT16 that allowed long filenames. FAT32 is a version of the FAT filesystem that had a larger drive size limit than FAT16 did. You can learn more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table __________________ DISTRO=Gentoo Registered Linux User #388732 Gentoo Linux, 410 GB HD, 1.2 GB RAM, Fluxbox, These are a Few of my Favorite Things

11-08-2006	#6 (permalink)
felipe1982 Linux Newbie Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 165	This is what I get at konsole sudo fdisk root's password: sudo: fdisk: command not found sudo cfdisk sudo: cfdisk: command not found __________________ Visit Felipe Alvarez's website. Linux & Windows is like Motorbikes & Cars...they work in fundamentally different ways...you should pick whichever is appropriate, not pick one and expect it to do everything that the other can do [link]

11-08-2006

#7 (permalink)

devils casper

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Join Date: Jun 2006

Location: Chandigarh, India

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Quote:

Originally Posted by felipe1982

sudo fdisk
root's password:
sudo: fdisk: command not found

use 'su' instead of 'sudo'

Code:

su -
fdisk /dev/sda
mkfs -t vfat /dev/sda1

casper

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11-14-2006	#8 (permalink)
felipe1982 Linux Newbie Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 165	solved: thanks Code: # cfdisk This works beautifully. Thanks everybody. Code: # parted Is another very good utility for partitioning free space, and formatting partitions. It has a few more filesystems to chose from compared with cfdisk (most I'll never use, but FAT32 on cfdisk was not compatible with my windows (xp pro SP2) whereas FAT32 in parted worked correctly.) __________________ Visit Felipe Alvarez's website. Linux & Windows is like Motorbikes & Cars...they work in fundamentally different ways...you should pick whichever is appropriate, not pick one and expect it to do everything that the other can do [link]

11-14-2006

#9 (permalink)