I highly recommend gnome-disk-utility for formatting USB stick and flash cards.

[michel]

I had issues with my flash cards and my USB stick. Issues with formatting them and ending up with read only devices that would not respond to changing permissions or ownership.

I tried KDE Partition Manager and the command line, etc... but it only worked when I formatted the drives using Windows!!!!!!! The horror ... the horror!!! The only thing that worked under Linux was gnome-disk-utility. Download it from the repositories. Highly recommended.

Wonder why the KDE people do not provide a similar highly needed utility.


Michel

[oshunluvr]

I'm unclear on what you've tried to do that didn't work and this part "but it only worked when I formatted the drives using Windows" makes no sense to me. I personally have not tried KDE partition manager on a thumb drive. I'm too old school - I just hit my terminal and format it there. I don't even have a windows computer, so that's not an option for me.

Don't get me wrong: I have no issue with your recommendation and I might try it myself. Although, I much prefer KDE integration, there are a few better written tools available for gnome.

I've never failed to be able to format a thumb drive using the command line. What was failing there for you?

[michel]

I had the same issue with both the USB stick and the flash card. I had them working fine, but decided to reformat them using FAT and use unetbootin to write puppy linux iso.

I started having problems launching unetbootin (I have a thread running regarding that) and then I used KDE partition manager to erase and then write a new partition using FAT 32.

The format was done and the USB would mount but I would not be able to write to it. I formated it with Windows on my son's machine and it was fine but if I did the same using KDE partition manager and or the command line

sudo mkfs.vfat -n ‘micro’ -I /dev/sdb1

then I would have the write issue.

I tried changing permissions and to change ownership using root actions in dolphin and similar command lines but to no avail. When I googled this I got a lot of similar cases with different solutions and different (very complicated) commands, until I read about a guy who solved a similar problem using gnome-disk-utility.

I'm like you. I prefer to keep everything KDE for the sake of stability and as a matter of principle, but that utility is really good and has no KDE match that I know of.

So I just thought I would start a thread to help someone trying to solve a similar problem.

Michel

[oshunluvr]

I've never encountered this. If I get some time tonight, I'll try it out on my machine and see what results I get.

[vinnywright]

I cant reproduce it @hear , KDE-partition manager-1.0.3. KDE-4.10.1
just deleted then re-created a FAT-32 partition on a 16Gig USB stick and coped a file to it just fine.

VINNY

[SteveRiley]

Windows kind of blurs what is really a three step process. In Linux, you need to explicitly perform the steps separately.

The first step is to create a partition table. Tools such as fdisk, gdisk, and parted will do this. A partition table is the first data structure on the drive, and contains the list of partitions.

The second step is to create a partition. Tools such as those above, plus sfdisk (and others) will do this. A partition is a contiguous set of blocks with a defined start and end point on the drive.

The third step is to create a filesystem on the partition. mkfs and its variants will do this. mkfs will not (with one exception) place a file system directly on a drive -- you need a partition first.

The one exception is using mkdosfs (also known as mkfs.vfat) with the -I parameter (that's a capital letter "eye," not a lower-case "ell" or the numeral one). It appears you discovered this in post #3. Typically, only magneto-optical media lacks partitions. For USB drives, you should first create a partition, and then put a filesystem on it. Using the command in the format you quoted is likely to be the reason your USB drives didn't operate properly.

I'll walk through the process step by step. My test device is a USB drive called /dev/sdb.

Step 1. Create a partition table
msdos means that we're creating a drive with an MBR-style partition table, the proper type of table for a USB drive.

sudo parted /dev/sdb mklabel msdos

Step 2. Create a partition
Here, we're creating a single primary partition that spans the entire space of the drive.

sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary 0% 100%

Step 3. Create a filesystem
For USB drives, FAT32 ensures cross-platform compatibility.

sudo mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb1

= = =

Now, as to why the KDE Partition Manager wasn't working for you, it's very difficult to surmise. Might you try it again, document each step you take, and then reply here with that information? Perhaps you're omitting a step someplace.

[michel]

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation but as I tried to go through them I had the following message at the first step. Is that normal?

michel@michel-Satellite-L650:~$ sudo parted /dev/sdb mklabel msdos
[sudo] password for michel:
Warning: Partition(s) on /dev/sdb are being used.
Ignore/Cancel? Ignore
Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sdb will be destroyed and all
data on this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue?
Yes/No? Yes
Error: Partition(s) 1 on /dev/sdb have been written, but we have been
unable to inform the kernel of the change, probably because it/they are in
use. As a result, the old partition(s) will remain in use. You should
reboot now before making further changes.
Ignore/Cancel? I
Information: You may need to update /etc/fstab.

I went into the USB drive and found my files were still there but the drive was now read only. Sort of what used to happen before with KDE partition manager and the commands in Konsole.

Michel

Edit: I used gnome-disk-utility to reformat the drive and create a new extension. Creating a FAT partition also resulted in a read only situation. When I edited the partition and changed the system to Win 95 FAT 32LBA the problem was solved. I have no idea what is happening.