[SOLVED] USB pen drive format

jjonas · 01-15-2012, 11:27 AM

Hi,

I have a USB pen drive, of which Nautilus says when it tries to mount it:

Error mounting: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

Dmesg in turn says:

[38224.159693] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Asking for cache data failed
[38224.159704] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[38224.163780] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Asking for cache data failed
[38224.163793] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[38224.431331] sdc: sdc1
[38224.434886] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Asking for cache data failed
[38224.434897] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[38224.434906] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[38224.997304] FAT-fs (sdc1): bogus number of reserved sectors
[38224.997313] FAT-fs (sdc1): Can't find a valid FAT filesystem

It turned out this way after - for reasons that are unclear - the drive became read-only with part of its contents corrupted and unreadable. So I thought trying formatting it (based on instructions I can't find on the net anymore, sorry), but the above is the end result.

Is the something that can be done? I guess it's possible the drive's just gone bad to begin with, with the corrupted unreadable data there already before I started messing around with it.

theNbomr · 01-15-2012, 11:41 AM

It is simple enough to put a new filesystem on any block device. First:

Code:

man mkfs

then

Code:

mkfs -t <filesystemtype> /dev/devicePartition

In your case that probably should be

Code:

mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdc1

Note that there is nothing to say that USB flash drives must be formatted with DOS filesystems, nor that they must have one giant partition. Most, if not all USB flash drives are factory formatted that way for compatibility with Windows. If the device is actually broken, you have nothing to lose by trying to reformat it.

--- rod.

otoomet · 01-15-2012, 12:37 PM

You may also try to remove the existing partition and create a new (using fdisk or something like gparted).

jjonas · 01-15-2012, 01:25 PM

Thanks, that solved the problem!