USB stick

[SigurdF]

Hi,
I used a USB stick to transfer data from my computer to another. At least I wanted to do so. When I transfered some pictures to the USB stick obviously I pulled out the stick too early. One picture is only half and the last picture is black. The problem now is that I only can read data from the stick. I cannot delete anything anymore. I copied the other data of the stick to my hard disk. But now how can I format the USB stick that it will work properly again?
Kind regards, Sigurd

[SigurdF]

Re: USB stick

Hi,
Sorry, I could solve the problem with an old trick from windows. After booting the computer I could rename the folder on the USB stick. Again a new reboot interrupted the still existing link to the interrupted file transfer. Now I could delete the new named folder and its files. And all is working fine again.
But I still would like to know how I can format a drive under kubuntu? Is there an order for the terminal as it was in windows: "format D:" to format drive D?
Kind regards,
Sigurd

[dibl]

Re: USB stick

Whether you are using Windows or Linux, you should never just pull out a USB memory stick, nor a USB-connected hard drive or memory card. You always should use "Safely Remove", to avoid damaging the filesystem (the "format").

So, to your question. You have the KDE partition manager, and you also can install Gparted. With either one, you can choose your (already inserted) USB memory stick, then choose to make a new filesystem, and choose FAT 32 for the filesystem type.

[Detonate]

Re: USB stick

Gparted will do the job. You are lucky your system sees the disk. When this happened to me, the disk got corrupted and my system does not even recognize it anymore. It does not even show up in the bios. Lucky for me that I did not have any files on it that I did not have copies of on my hard disk. Format it to FAT32 and it will be read by both Linux and Windows.

[kingstonusb]

Re: USB stick

i also have this problem,and one of my kingston usb flash drive have this problem who can solve this proble??
thank you

[oshunluvr]

Re: USB stick

Is there an order for the terminal as it was in windows: "format D:" to format drive D?

In linux, we don't "format" we "make a file system" which is abbreviated mkfs. So to make a vfat (windows compatible) format we mkfs.vfat. The full command in a terminal is:

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1

substituting of course, /dev/sdb1 for the drive and partition label you wish to format. Ususally, you would use vfat for a thumb drive to ensure windows compatibility, but for a hard drive there are dozens of formats. Most can be created with mkfs. and the type of format.