How to I format my memory stick?
 

So, I have files on my memory stick, but they aren't showing up on the screen when I insert the stick in the computer. Someone who also uses Linux told me to reformat it, and that should work. How do I do that with Puredyne?

Is the stick mounted?
which filesystem is on the stick?
You do know if you format the stick, the files will be gone?

Kind regards

I have no idea what "mounted" means, as I know absolutely nothing about Linux...or computers in general for that matter.
Some stuff comes up-have a word document there, as well as some other stuff, but I transferred some pictures over to the stick yesterday. According to the stick, the pics are on there, but they aren't showing up at all on the screen. I have no idea what kind of file system is on there. I hadn't put anything more than pictures or word documents on it since I bought it. So, how do I access the files without deleting them, if that's possible?

I think I'd use or start with a program called testdisk. There is a windows version of it. There are also other apps to get data off a flash drive.

In what OS did you put the files on the flash drive?


There are also live linux cd's that have testdisk on it.

Okay, I'll look for that. I only have Linux on my computer...don't have access to Windows at the moment. The word docs I put on through Windows, but I've put pics on through Windows in the past, as well as through Linux without problem.

Most distros create a mountpoint called '/media' or similar, maybe '/mnt/media'. Use a filesystem browser like dolphin to see if you can find an obvious branch at the filesystem root. In a shell commandline, run The results may be obvious. Use you filesystem browser or specific application to browse to the place you find from 'mount'.

--- rod.

---------- Post added 2011-07-10 at 16:07 ----------

Most distros create a mountpoint called '/media' or similar, maybe '/mnt/media'. Use a filesystem browser like dolphin to see if you can find an obvious branch at the filesystem root. In a shell commandline, run The results may be obvious. Use you filesystem browser or specific application to browse to the place you find from 'mount'.

--- rod.

You lost me.

If you are using Ubuntu, look for a menu item with a name like "Nautilus" or "Places." Nautilus is a file manager, similar to Windows Explorer.

If you are using a version of Ubuntu older than v. 11.04 (released this April), look on the menu bar for an item called "Places." Click it and look around for your memory stick. It will likely appear "X GB File System," where X = the size of the drive, although it might appear with a brand name, depending on how it's configured internally.

Linux is not Windows. Expecting it to act just like Windows is setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration.

About dot com has a good introduction.

I would recommend starting here.

I'm using Puredyne, and I'm so completely lost with it. I have no idea where to find anything in it. I've noticed it's as far from Windows as one can get, and it's certainly frustrating for anyone not familiar with Linux, and knows little to nothing about computers, like me. I'm seriously contemplating switching back to Windows at this point.

Puredyne is based on Ubuntu. It's pretty specialized in its intent and I expect it doesn't have a lot of users. Have you read their documentation page? That would seem the best place to start. I doubt if many members here have even heard of it.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Puredyne

Yeah, that's pretty much what I get when I click on the help for the OS. It's not really much help to me at all, at least for what I'm trying to do, between trying to figure out how to access the files on my flash drive, and trying to install the Flash Player. I'm kind of getting frustrated with it.

From the wiki the distro does not look like it is built for daily usage, I mean it seems for specific purposes. so if you are new to linux and want to use it for usual daily activities, please try out Ubutnu or Linux Mint they are very user friendly.

The above from your first post. What exactly does that mean? You get no icon on the Desktop? The page I referred you to explains under the How-to section how to mount partitions. It also states that mounting of local partitions is automatic and the standard place for it is in the /media directory. Have you looked in the /media directory to see if it is mounted there? If it is not, that same page explains in detail how to create a mount point and mount a partition.

You need to explain exactly what that means.
Are you trying to access these files from the file manager?

I get an icon on the screen for the stick, and I can open that up. But when I access the stick, the only icon that shows up is a word document I had put on there a while back. I tried to put some pictures on it, and there's no icon showing that they are there. I know that some of the memory is used up, but I have no idea how to figure out how to access the files on there, or how to even find them. I'm not going through the File Manager at all...I access the stick directly from the desktop.

Are you sure they are on the stick?
What happens if you put some pictures on the stick, when it's mounted?

Kind regards