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Old 12-13-2005, 02:21 AM   #1
sadarax
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Registered: Sep 2005
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Format a Compact Flash Drive While Mounted


I have a compact flash drive that I use in a card reader. My system cannot see the card if it is not mounted. But I need to reformat the card from fat16 to ext2. However I cannot format a mounted partion or device. Any ideas?

I am trying to install debian onto my Zaurus 3100, but I just cannot get this CF card formated right. And without ext2, I cannot copy the files extract from this:

http://www.pocketworkstation.org/fil...-big-v0.18.tgz

And follow the instructions here:
http://www.pocketworkstation.org/fil...-big-v0.18.tgz

Can someone help me?

Last edited by sadarax; 12-13-2005 at 03:41 AM.
 
Old 12-13-2005, 03:59 AM   #2
kilgoretrout
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With the flash drive mounted run this as root:

# fdisk -l

that will list all partitions that the system recognizes, whether mounted or not. You should see one for your flash drive, usually /dev/sda if you don't have any sata or scsi hard drives. Next, unmount the flash drive and rerun, fdisk -l. You should still see the entry for your flash drive. To reformat the flash drive to ext2, run:

# mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sdax

where 'x' corresponds to the partition number on the flash drive(usually sda1).
 
Old 12-15-2005, 03:26 AM   #3
sadarax
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Thank you. That worked.
 
  


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