unable to get drive geometry when mkfs.vfat

casualzone · 01-26-2010, 08:02 PM

I got this message when I tried to format my eternal usb hard disk to vfat format. Do you know what it is about?

# /sbin/mkfs.vfat /dev/uba3
mkfs.vfat 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
unable to get drive geometry, using default 255/63

i have umount all the /media/

I have done an experiment on /dev/uba3. I was able to /sbin/mkfs.ext3 /dev/uba3 but not on mkfs.vfat

White Tea Citrus · 01-27-2010, 01:09 AM

I have the same problem with an old USB music player. I tried to use parted and fdisk, but nothing worked. I don't know about your drive, but in my case there has a bug been reported before, with some nice specs that could help the people.

casualzone · 01-28-2010, 09:56 PM

any other replies?

White Tea Citrus · 01-28-2010, 11:36 PM

I finally managed to format my USB disk found on /dev/sdc like this(apparently my disk was too small for fat32):

mkdosfs -F 16 -I /dev/sdc

mixonic · 01-10-2014, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by White Tea Citrus

I finally managed to format my USB disk found on /dev/sdc like this(apparently my disk was too small for fat32):

mkdosfs -F 16 -I /dev/sdc

I have the same problem and I tried with your example above but the error is the same...The partition is 800 mb on USB.. Dont know what to do,anyone help please