[CONFIGURATION] Pendrive

[anonprivate]

Hi,

I put my pendrive in a Windows machine recently and received a message that the pendrive needs a repair. It works well on my kubuntu machine.

My question is: 'Should I allow the Windows machine to repair the drive'?, bearing in mind that I normally use this drive in my kubuntu machine?

Thanks.

[LinkBot]

Hi,

I put my pendrive in a Windows machine recently and received a message that the pendrive needs a repair. It works well on my kubuntu machine.

My question is: 'Should I allow the Windows machine to repair the drive'?, bearing in mind that I normally use this drive in my kubuntu machine?

Thanks.

No, you should always to check what is the problem before you try to repair.

If I plug a usb stick with 'wrong' format the Windows want to 'help' me.




Diagnose filesystem problems with the Ubuntu

- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fi...roubleshooting
- http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...n8/fsck.8.html

[Qqmike]

In a bit of a hurry waking up late this morning ... just one comment: I vaguely recall Windows (unbelievably) having some problem reading flash drives that had more than one partition--it was a real bummer for Linux folks. Or was this fixed at some point? If you google this, I'm sure tons of stuff will pop up. First step, use GParted (either installed in your Kubuntu or run it live from CD/USB) to determine exactly what IS on that drive; then proceed with google.

[Qqmike]

Like this:

can Windows read a flash drive having two partitions on it?

https://www.google.com/search?client...utf-8&oe=utf-8

From the first link listed there:

1. Fixed and removable disks: The difference

In Windows, fixed disks can have multiple partitions and removable disks can have only one partition. You can create two or more partitions on the removable disk in Linux, but Windows will recognize only the first partition on that disk.
Usually external USB HDDs are fixed disks and USB thumbdrives are removable disks in Windows.

Dig into this further, check the other links.

[anonprivate]

Thanks for responding.

I don't have many investigative tools in kubuntu, but using 'KDE Partition Manager', I note that the pendrive is formatted as fat32.

I wonder if this could account for the Windows repair message since it is likely that the Windows machine I was using is formatted as NTFS (I have not checked this - machine elsewhere).

Best wishes.

[Qqmike]

So, I assume the pendrive has only one partition, anyway, and so that is not the issue.

What file system to use for a USB drive?
I think FAT32 can be read anywhere (it does have a 4GB limit on the size of files, but that is not the issue here).
FAT32 is not a problem for Windows.

:

• If you are sharing a drive between computers and don’t need to use big files, FAT32 works almost everywhere but doesn’t support files bigger than 4GB. This is the default for flash drives since it works everywhere.
• If you do need to use files bigger than 4GB, exFAT works on Windows, Linux (with FUSE), and OS X. This is probably the best choice for a shared hard drive that will only be plugged into a computer.
• If you are only adding files from Windows and you need to use big files, NTFS works almost everywhere, although is read-only on OS X and doesn’t work on some media players.

http://www.howtogeek.com/73178/what-...Speed=noscript

I googled a little, and now and then people find that Windows can't read their flash drives for one reason or another, many issues. For other helpers here, you might tell us what version of Windows you are using. Btw, the KDE Partition Manger is OK -- and it shows only one partition, right? FAT32?

[Qqmike]

IOW, your FAT32 pendrive 'should' be OK. I wonder if this is so simple as this: Maybe you should use a Windows utility to format the drive FAT32? I mean, that sounds nuts, but I'm just wondering why Windows can't read a standard-format drive?

[MoonRise]

This is a common thing in Windows, apparently it sets a bit different to how Linux does.

This is the reason and I always ignore that repair in Windows as it will come back and say the same thing after using again on Linux. A MS issue in my opinion.

[SecretCode]

Same here, I've seen this quite often and I ignore it. Letting Windows "repair" the stick will usually result in grief.