Sorry, but I just have a terrible time getting started in Linux. What I want for the moment (having set up a partition on WinXP and ran a distro before) is a live MINT USB distro on a 64GB stick plugged into a Win7 machine. Since stick is 64GB, I am dealing with exfat. Found Gparted and seems to be okay, but gives an ominous warning about launching the win 32 formatter off of the stick drive and NOT windows (C:\). That part is understood. However I see the prompt "hit any key to format L" and when I look up at the colored title bar of the window, I read cmd: C:\ etc. that makes me wonder am in C: or L: (the USB drive letter). The Gparted iso in resident in L: but the drive needs C: for computing power etc. I know, I'm such a newbie it must be painful for many to read. I just don't want to screw up the MBR of C: In short. Unetbootin, MINT 17 and Gparted are all on L: and unzipped on a exfat USB thumbdrive. I want to fix the exfat to be readable by Unetbootin so I can make a live USB. I might be doing it correctly, but the top bar of the widow reading cmd: c:\etc etc scares me.

I can't really understand what you are trying to do or where you want to install Mint? You mention a 64GB usb drive and then refer to L, what's L? You won't see that type of naming convention in Linux. Is that a reference to your 64GB flash from windows? You use unetbootin on windows to create a bootable flash drive, then boot the computer with the flash drive set to first boot priority and install from there. Here's a link to installing Ubuntu 14.04. Since Mint is basically Ubuntu under the hood, the big change you will see with the Mint installer is the background color. They both use the ubiquity installer. About half way down the page, there is a step by step install guide. The top part gives detailed information on creating partitions.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/u...all-guide.html

FYI, GParted is on the Mint iso so you don't need it separately.

I assigned my USB drive the letter "L" so that it remains a fixed drive letter. I want no Linux on my Win7 notebook as I am running out of HDD space. Also, I want to play with Linux through Mint distro and wet my feet before diving in on an old notebook of mine with a new HDD. So the issue is exfat and getting Mint to be live and boot from the USB. I have the notebook set up with USB as number one in the drive order, but obviously the USB stick is not bootable for every restart goes straight into Windows. So I started googling and reading. I was told to use Yumi as my interface? with Mint, but that didn't work for me and I have used Unetbootin before just messing around and it worked. So I downloaded Unetbootin, then Mint 17 Cinnamon. Further reading said exfat has to have a work around. Even the Mint forum site said get Gparted. What do I know, so I did. As I was "applying" under the Win 32 folder, a commnand prompt dialog box opened which would fix my USB stick, known by my notebook as "L:" drive. The message warned about not launching this utility? from C:\ or I could hose my MBR for C:\. Then at the bottom of the dialog box was the instruction to hit any key to do what I wanted to do to my USB stick (L drive). I no longer remember the exact text wording. Everything looks good except that warning is still ringing in my newbie brain and I look up and see in the Windows dialog box or whatever it is called that contains the black background cmd box is a title bar, standard Windows stuff. However, the bar (the bar I am using right now reads "Quick Reply") read C:\ and the rest of the path. The operative part is C: NOT L: (the USB stick that the warning was quite clear about launching from and NOT C: My question is whether the Windows Title Bar text of C:\path can be ignored because inside the cmd dialog box for GParted it says hitting any key will affect L: (the USB stick drive letter)? I hope I am clearer now. Thank you.

" I want to fix the exfat to be readable by Unetbootin so I can make a live USB."


I think I'd plug this usb flash drive into a Windows 7 computer and format it ntfs. No great need to use exfat that I can see for this task.

As far as I understand it unetbootin and the like place the installer image on the USB stick and write over the MBR and any formatting? So, surely, it matters not how the USB stick is formatted as unetbootin will be removing that?
That said I was also of the understanding that exfat wasn't supported by default in Linux?
I have a feeling, kevinrf, that either you're misunderstanding a key concept here or you're trying to do something complicated like place the installer on a USB stick which you are using to boot gparted from.
The simplest way to create a USB installer should be to plug in the USB stick, formatted however the heck it came as default, under Windows then run unetbootin and point it at the USB stick to create a bootable USB stick. That's it, nothing more.

Welcome to LinuxQuestions

Unlike the dd command UNetbootin does not overwrite the existing filesystem therefore for it to work the USB drive must be FAT32. Windows will not create a FAT32 filesystem > 32GB anymore and Unetbootin can not handle exfat.

I believe what you are going to do is create a live USB that runs gparted and it appears the creator also requires a FAT32 formatted USB drive. So this is not going to work for you either.

http://gparted.org/liveusb.php#windows-method-b

I might try shrinking the existing partition on the drive to <32GB and see if you can format it as FAT32 using windows.
If you have computer that has a CD/DVD burner then creating a Mint boot disc then run it to create a bootable USB drive if the computer you want to install Mint does not have an optical drive might be easier. If you can burn a disc then running gparted from a live CD would also work.

Sometimes I get confused because I'm so used to MS .exe files that is a click and forget it sort of operation. Linux is not so simple and I understand there are reasons for that. It's a learning process and I'm okay with that. What I did was scrounge up a 32GB thumbdrive format it FAT32 and called it good. It works. Not as much extra data room as I would like but then again by the time I used up all I currently have I'll probably have it installed on my spare laptop (once I find a new IDE drive.

Thank you for your help. I was wondering whether I could do what I wanted but had my doubts. Now they seem to be confirmed. My linux quest may not be hopeless after all. As for 273's comment to just stick in the USB however formatted, is worth a try just to see what happens. For now the 32GB is up and running and I'm having fun with it.

Thank you again.

Now that your 32GB is up and running you can reformat your 64 to FAT32.