re-formatting a flash drive

ferrel · 04-05-2007, 05:08 AM

I have a 1Gb flash drive that has become corrupted...
can't remove files on it (they are "read only", etc).
I want to format (reformat) it on Mandriva 2007.
man mkfs.vfat
looks like it may provide the answer; but is it normal
to format these drives with some variant of vfat?
How exactly should I do this? (without destroying
anything else!)
Thanks in advance!
Ferrel

weibullguy · 04-05-2007, 05:59 AM

You can format a flash drive with the same commands you would format a hard drive or floppy. You can't do it AFAIK without losing the information on the drive.

theYinYeti · 04-05-2007, 06:09 AM

For your information, you can use Mandriva's partitions tool for formating the device. Select the tab corresponding to your device, then click on the single partition, and click "Format" (you may need to be in "expert mode" to do this).

It is normal to have fat-variants on flash drives. So far, I have seen FAT12, FAT16, and VFAT.

Yves.

ferrel · 04-05-2007, 10:49 PM

Thanks for the information. It worked perfectly!
Ferrel