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Old 12-29-2008, 10:05 PM   #1
twelvenine
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partitioning a flash drive


I want to partition my flash drive, but i'm having trouble accessing it with cfdisk(my preferred partitioning tool). normally, if i were going to partition a hard drive(sda, for example), i would just do:
Code:
cfdisk /dev/sda
my flash drive gets set up as /dev/sdb1, so i figure the device is sdb and the only partition on it is sdb1. i try
Code:
cfdisk /dev/sdb
and get a weird error. can anybody help me?
 
Old 12-29-2008, 10:16 PM   #2
michaelk
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And the weird error is...?
Is this a U3 flash drive?
 
Old 12-29-2008, 11:03 PM   #3
twelvenine
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it says:
Quote:
ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder
the weird thing is, it kind of works when i do "cfdisk /dev/sdb1". it shows a bunch of free space, with no partition type. this seems odd to me because i thought you couldn't partition a partition, only devices. when i tried "cfdisk /dev/sda1" i got an error.

it's a kingston, it didn't come with any u3 stuff installed or do any u3 stuff when i used it in windows.

Last edited by twelvenine; 12-30-2008 at 01:13 AM.
 
Old 12-30-2008, 02:46 AM   #4
twelvenine
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in a vaguely interesting turn of events... fdisk had no problem with the drive at all. and after i partitioned it using fdisk, cfdisk played nice with the usb drive. so, it looks like cfdisk just had some kind of incompatibility with the way the drive was initially partitioned at the manufacturer or something.
 
  


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