[arch-general] Label and Format USB Drive
I have a USB thrumb drive when I mount it, it mounts fine and shows up as "USBDRIVE" on my system. I would like to know how I can reformat the drive as fat32 using the 'mkfs' command and also setting a new system label on the drive as "ocz_usb"? I do not appear to have the tools installed on my Arch system that allow me to format as fat32 and can't find the command to format and set the label? Can this be done in one command step?
16.06.2010 20:11, Carlos Mennens wrote:
I have a USB thrumb drive when I mount it, it mounts fine and shows up as "USBDRIVE" on my system.
I would like to know how I can reformat the drive as fat32 using the 'mkfs' command and also setting a new system label on the drive as "ocz_usb"? I do not appear to have the tools installed on my Arch system that allow me to format as fat32 and can't find the command to format and set the label? Can this be done in one command step?
You need to install the package dosfstools from [extra]. Then you can format your drive with mkfs.
With /dev/sdb as your usb drive, to format: fdisk /dev/sdb mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1 and then to name the partition: mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 ::ocz_usb -- Guilherme M. Nogueira "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Am 16.06.2010 20:23, schrieb Guilherme M. Nogueira:
With /dev/sdb as your usb drive, to format:
fdisk /dev/sdb mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1
and then to name the partition:
mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 ::ocz_usb
Then (for mlabel) you'll need mtools, too. The label can be passed as an option to mkdosfs, or you can use dosfslabel to set it.
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas@archlinux.org> wrote:
Am 16.06.2010 20:23, schrieb Guilherme M. Nogueira:
With /dev/sdb as your usb drive, to format:
fdisk /dev/sdb mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1
and then to name the partition:
mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 ::ocz_usb
Then (for mlabel) you'll need mtools, too. The label can be passed as an option to mkdosfs, or you can use dosfslabel to set it.
It appears Arch can't find /dev/sdd1 however I can find it fine when I use the 'fdisk' utility. I don't understand why... [root@tuna ~]# mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdd1 mkfs.vfat 3.0.9 (31 Jan 2010) /dev/sdd1: No such file or directory When I look under the /dev/ directory, I don't see sda sdb sdc or sdd. Am I missing something here?
Excerpts from Carlos Mennens's message of Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:11 -0400:
It appears Arch can't find /dev/sdd1 however I can find it fine when I use the 'fdisk' utility. I don't understand why...
You should not fdisk on a partition (like sdd1), only on the whole device e.g. /dev/sdd
[root@tuna ~]# mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdd1 mkfs.vfat 3.0.9 (31 Jan 2010) /dev/sdd1: No such file or directory
Nowadays some USB drives are not partitioned, so maybe you indeed have no /dev/sdd1, but just /dev/sdd - you can use the whole drive to create a file system, but I'd recommend to create a partition with fdisk first. Also "mkfs.vfat -n ocz_usb /dev/hdd1" will put the label right away.
When I look under the /dev/ directory, I don't see sda sdb sdc or sdd.
That's strange, but by the way, how do you look into it? What is output of "ls -l /dev/sd*" ? Cheers, Serg1
On 17 June 2010 03:26, Sergey Manucharian <ingeniware@gmail.com> wrote:
Excerpts from Carlos Mennens's message of Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:11 -0400:
It appears Arch can't find /dev/sdd1 however I can find it fine when I use the 'fdisk' utility. I don't understand why...
You should not fdisk on a partition (like sdd1), only on the whole device e.g. /dev/sdd
[root@tuna ~]# mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdd1 mkfs.vfat 3.0.9 (31 Jan 2010) /dev/sdd1: No such file or directory
Nowadays some USB drives are not partitioned, so maybe you indeed have no /dev/sdd1, but just /dev/sdd - you can use the whole drive to create a file system, but I'd recommend to create a partition with fdisk first.
Also "mkfs.vfat -n ocz_usb /dev/hdd1" will put the label right away.
When I look under the /dev/ directory, I don't see sda sdb sdc or sdd.
That's strange, but by the way, how do you look into it? What is output of "ls -l /dev/sd*" ?
No partition (which is actually 1 primary partition without a proper partition table) still shows up as sd(x)(n), as far as experience goes. One thing I like to do now is make sure of the allocation units. I have noted a big difference in performance between drives formatted with Linux/Windows' default tool(s) and those by HP Disk Format Utility (or something like that). With the latter, 8GB gets 4,096 wheres 32 gets 16,384. Transfer rates (write) grew from 3MB/s to 7MB/s across platforms. http://www.patriotmemory.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3696 -- GPG/PGP ID: B42DDCAD
participants (6)
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Aljosha Papsch
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Carlos Mennens
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Guilherme M. Nogueira
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Ray Rashif
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Sergey Manucharian
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Thomas Bächler