format my flash memory stick

faizlo · 07-26-2009, 01:58 AM

Hi,

I have used my flash memory stick to install CentOS on one of my boxes. I used the dd command as it was explained there. Now I cannot use my flash stick again. It says all space I have left is 5 MB.My flash stick is 8 GB in size. Any idea how to get it back as a storage medium?

Thanks in advance,

faizlo

EmrldDrgn · 07-26-2009, 02:26 AM

If it were me, I'd download and use gparted. It's my standard go-to formatting/partitioning utility. Of course there are numerous other options too, but gparted is pretty user-friendly, and should be very helpful.

r00tb33r · 07-26-2009, 11:07 AM

fdisk and mkfs should be able to take care of that.

onebuck · 07-28-2009, 03:53 PM

Hi,

You could use the cli with 'cfdisk' to create your partition. After the partitions are created then use 'mke2fs' to format the device filesystem as ext2.

michaelk · 07-28-2009, 04:35 PM

In a nutshell the dd command creates an exact image. The size of the flash disk will even though it is 8GB will appear to be the same size as the original boot image file whatever that maybe. As stated all you need to do is use any of the partitioning tools to recover the space and put the disk back to its original state.

faizlo · 08-03-2009, 09:10 PM

Hi,

here is what I had from gparted:

Code:

GParted 0.4.4

Libparted 1.8.8
Delete /dev/sdb1 (fat16, 7.65 GiB) from /dev/sdb  00:00:02    ( ERROR )
     	
calibrate /dev/sdb1  00:00:01    ( SUCCESS )
     	
path: /dev/sdb1
start: 0
end: 16041612
size: 16041613 (7.65 GiB)
delete partition  00:00:01    ( ERROR )
libparted messages    ( INFO )
     	
Input/output error during write on /dev/sdb

========================================
Create Primary Partition #1 (fat32, 7.65 GiB) on /dev/sdb

========================================

What does it mean?

faizlo