Formating a Pen drive

umwai · 02-05-2009, 10:11 PM

How to Format a pen drive using terminal. (How to find my pen drive inside the /dev folder )

i92guboj · 02-05-2009, 10:21 PM

You can start with fdisk -l

You could as well write an udev rule so it's always named the same way. That way you don't have to hunt for it.

http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html

umwai · 02-11-2009, 12:34 AM

Thanks i92guboj

cloud9repo · 02-11-2009, 05:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by umwai

How to Format a pen drive using terminal. (How to find my pen drive inside the /dev folder )

parted and mkfs usually work. mkfs is included in parted, which is the way it's recommended to use it.

As a super user, and in a terminal, type parted.
Within the commands prompts, the help command will list available options.

There's also info on the Inet.

i92guboj · 02-11-2009, 06:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cloud9repo

parted and mkfs usually work. mkfs is included in parted, which is the way it's recommended to use it.

Mmmm, if you are talking about the regular mkfs tool then

A) it's not part of parted, it's an independent tool
B) it not recommended or discouraged to run it from within parted. mkfs existed much before in fact. If you just want to reformat a partition there's absolutely no sense in installing parted just for that. Just mkfs is all you need and it works ok, plus you can probably fine tune it better.

Parted is good at partitioning, but it's not needed at all if you just want to reformat.

farslayer · 02-11-2009, 07:37 AM

Want to know what /dev your USB memory stick is ? A couple simple commands will take care of that for you..
Issue the following command and then plug in your drive, so you can watch it being detected.

Code:

it-lenny:~# tail -f /var/log/messages
Feb 11 05:45:58 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 06:05:59 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 06:25:59 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 06:45:59 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 07:05:59 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 07:26:00 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 07:46:00 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 08:06:00 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 08:07:00 it-etch syslogd 1.5.0#5: restart.
Feb 11 08:26:00 it-etch -- MARK --
Feb 11 08:30:30 it-etch kernel: usb 6-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 19
Feb 11 08:30:30 it-etch kernel: usb 6-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Feb 11 08:30:30 it-etch kernel: scsi18 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel:   Vendor: USB 2.0   Model: Flash Disk        Rev: 1100
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel: SCSI device sdb: 3963904 512-byte hdwr sectors (2030 MB)
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel: SCSI device sdb: 3963904 512-byte hdwr sectors (2030 MB)
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel:  sdb: sdb1
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel: sd 18:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdb
Feb 11 08:30:35 it-etch kernel: sd 18:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0

As you can see the system identified the USB Flash drive I plugged in is /dev/sdb

My listing shows there is already a partition on my USB drive (sdb1) and I know the default file system for flash drives is fat32.

if I wanted to reformat the USB drive as fat32 from the command line I would use mkdosfs.

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Mkdosfs