(SOLVED) Formating a USB

[john030655]

I use a USB stick to be able to play films on my DVD player connected to the television (it has it's own media player built in).
However, I have had problems in the passed that when I delete files from the USB and load new ones on, it doesn't work.
Investigation has taught me that I have to format the USB before loading new files and everything goes well. (It appears some header files don't get cleared when just deleting).
Under (dare I say it) wi**ows, all I have to do is right click the drive and select format, job done.

Can I format a USB in pclos and if so, how do I do it. I have looked and can't work this out.

[Crow]

Configure your computer - root password - local disks - (administrar particiones de disco sorry is in spanish) manage disk partitions - select the appropriate disk verifying is not your HD - unmount - format.

In expert mode you can change type also.

[horusfalcon]

It's odd that you are having trouble with this.  USB pen/key/thumb/whatever flash drives are usually pretty reliable media, and work well so long as they are formatted properly for the devices with which they are being used.

Most flash drives are formatted as FAT32, and are thus compatible with a wide range of equipment.  It might pay to look into what your video player is expecting.  It may be that the drive you are using is not behaving "true to standard".  Maybe try a different one?  I have good luck in general with devices made by SanDisk, Ativa, and Memorex.

To re-format your flash drive, you should probably use the PCLinuxOS Control Center (Configure Your Computer), under Local Disks, selecting Manage Disk Partitions. 

As always, be careful to read and think before you format a device.  This tool will NOT default to your USB drive - the first thing you should see is your first hard drive (the one your system is installed on).  Look for a set of tabs at the top which allow you to select other mounted drives.  One of these will be your USB device (mine mounts up as sdb, but you should look to be sure before formatting anything.

Good luck with your drive.

Later On,
D

[MBantz]

I have experienced strange things with formatting usually cheap usb keys - yesterday I formatted a usb key to ext3 from the commandline - gparted crashed hard (in zen and live-drbl (another distro)) when I rescanned with this device inserted. After formatting, pulling it out and reinserted - it is still fat32!

This has happend for me a couple of times now - it seems some keys are hard-coded to fat32 - still trying to figure out what is going on with these keys...

Apart from that I sucessfully reformat other keys with no isues,

cheers

[john030655]

Thanks for the info.

My USB's are Kingston and Sandisk and formatted in fat32 as this is what my DVD player is looking for. My films etc are converted to XVid.
I read on a DVD / Television USB input site about formatting before copying files over.
It was stated that if you delete files and then copy new ones on, there are some odd header files that get left over and these stop the DVD from finding the new files.
Under windows I have a choice of quick or normal format and different file types I.E. fat, fat32, ntfs.
So every time I do a quick format, copy my files over and they then play okay on my DVD.
I haven't tried just deleting the files under linux and then adding new ones, this may work as the above problem may be a windows one, so I'll have to try it.

But my main point was learning how to format under linux, so thank you for the information.

[Was_Just19]

I have experienced strange things with formatting usually cheap usb keys - yesterday I formatted a usb key to ext3 from the commandline - gparted crashed hard (in zen and live-drbl (another distro)) when I rescanned with this device inserted. After formatting, pulling it out and reinserted - it is still fat32!

This has happend for me a couple of times now - it seems some keys are hard-coded to fat32 - still trying to figure out what is going on with these keys...

Apart from that I sucessfully reformat other keys with no isues,

cheers

I suggest you use   fdisk -l  /dev/sd?   from the command line to get information about the device and its partition/s.
I guess there *may* be something hardcoded on it .....  but thankfully I have not come across anything like that.

I have bought some USB flash drives which have some form of universal partition table which caused no end of trouble. (It seemed to be set to be usable in Linux, MAC & Win, but am not sure)

I wiped the partition table and recreated a new one (DOS standard) and the devices have been reliable since.

regards.

[ternor]

I also have a usb stick named 'Kingston'.  When I copy any unexecutable file to it, the file becomes executable.

The stick contains a Windows folder named 'urDrive' and three other Windows files, 'autorun.inf', 'unInstaller.exe' and 'urDrive.exe'.

When I look at the drive in PCLinuxOS Control Centre, I see these details:

Device: sdb1
Volume label: KINGSTON
UUID: 3433-3231
DOS drive letter: C (just a guess)
Type: W95 FAT32 (LBA) (0xc)
Start: sector 2232
Size: 3.7GB (99%), 7812936 sectors
Cylinder 0 to 1016
Mounted

One of the file systems offered in PCC is 'ext4'.  My hard drive partitions are 'ext3'.

I have these questions:

1.  Will the usb stick become unusable if I delete the Windows folder and files?
2.  Will I be able to use the stick (formatted other than with a ext3 system) to hold copies of files created on ext3 partitions and copy or move them back to the hard drive in a usable form?
3.  Would it be better to use a file system other than ext4 and, if so, which system?

Thank you.

[Crow]

1.  Will the usb stick become unusable if I delete the Windows folder and files?

No, you only lost the preinstalled software good only in Windows, unless that software duplicates the size of the USB memory by software (in windows also)

2.  Will I be able to use the stick (formatted other than with a ext3 system) to hold copies of files created on ext3 partitions and copy or move them back to the hard drive in a usable form?

Yes

3.  Would it be better to use a file system other than ext4 and, if so, which system?

If you will be using different systems NTFS-3G is a better option, is what I use.

[ternor]

Thanks.  I have formatted the usb stick's partition as NTFS-3G.  Permissions still change on copying to the usb stick using Midnight Commander.  If I do not select "preserve attributes" on copying them back to the hard drive, the permissions revert to the original ones.