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[tickmike]

New Memory Stick, I was going to format it but:-
I bought a 4GB 'verbatim' pinstripe USB Drive today, it is detected ok when I plug it in but when I open 'pclinuxos control center'>Local disks>manage disk partitions it gives me a warning "The program has exited abnormally"  

In a 'terminal' df -T
 /dev/sdc1     vfat    3.8G   16K  3.8G   1% /media/STORE N GO

How can I format it and write a new name for it.?

[stevie]

Why not just format it, Gparted should do it.

[tickmike]

Why not just format it, Gparted should do it.

With it plugged in it crashes Gparted  but Gparted works ok without the memory stick plugged in 

[BritBrat]

You need a SwissKnife



Oh, not sure about Linux.

[roseway]

I think this should work - from a terminal:

mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdc1

(You may possibly have to run this as root.)

[tickmike]

I think this should work - from a terminal:

mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdc1

(You may possibly have to run this as root.)

It says "contains a mounted file system"   But it's new not used ?  

Also tried it on another machine and I get the same results.

Edit... I want to format it in Fat32 if possible.

[stevie]

I wonder if its got a program on it & trying to exe it?

I notice the vfat in your original post, which is to do with using extended filenames, so its possible this is causing problems?

Can you not just bung it in a Windows PC & Format it, then use GParted/swissknife to format to Fat32?

Having said all the above Linux would normally just allow you to format the drive, so I`m confused?

[roseway]

Aren't vfat and fat32 essentially the same thing?

[silversurfer44]

It's probably got some Windows auto run exe on it. PClinuxOS is based on Mandriva if my memory serves me right. If so you should be able to cd to whatever directory it is, see what's on it. If you can boot your computer to single user (safemode) cd to the mounted directory and delete whatever is there. There may may be a hidden file on there also. Just do rm -r * whilst in that directory. Be careful using that command you can wipe the whole system if you are in the root directory.

[stevie]

Aren't vfat and fat32 essentially the same thing?

Very possibly, but not too sure, vfat came out before Win95 if I read things correctly, its a bit confusing.

A more detailed description available on the link below scroll down to "Long file names"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

Regards.

Steve

[BritBrat]

vfat could be FAT16.

Find a PC and use that program I posted a link to but I am not sure it does USB pen drives but I know it does USB hard drives.

[Alex Atkin UK]

New Memory Stick, I was going to format it but:-
I bought a 4GB 'verbatim' pinstripe USB Drive today, it is detected ok when I plug it in but when I open 'pclinuxos control center'>Local disks>manage disk partitions it gives me a warning "The program has exited abnormally"  

In a 'terminal' df -T
 /dev/sdc1     vfat    3.8G   16K  3.8G   1% /media/STORE N GO

How can I format it and write a new name for it.?

Run as root:

umount /dev/sdc1
mkfs.vfat -I -n memorystick -F 32 /dev/sdc

Of course make sure it IS mounted as sdc1 first as plugging it in a second time it could easily show up as something else in which case you need to change those lines accordingly.  Also make sure if it pops open a window showing the contents you close it before trying the above or it will be unable to umount it.

[tickmike]

This is proving to be very problematic.
A big thanks to all the help, and welcome to  Alex Atkin UK who posted at 04.07 AM  do you work nights ?.

This is what I have been doing over the last two nights, last night I used a live cd in another machine (one that if I trashed the file system it would not matter  ), With a terminal I first tried 'fdisk' to delete the partitions and the creating a new one, using 'mkfs' to install a new file system, then 'fsck' to format it.

On trying the memory stick with 'df -T' I ended up with 'ext3' file system    and it still crashed 'gparted' and 'pclinuxos control center'>Local disks>manage disk partitions it gives me a warning "The program has exited abnormally" 

Tonight I tried Alex's method, but it still crashes 'gparted' and 'pclinuxos control center'>Local disks>manage disk partitions it gives me a warning "The program has exited abnormally" 

It still shows up as Vfat with 'df -T'

I have another machine with 'Puppy Linux' on it shows up still as Vfat and instead of the name 'usb_pen_drive' it showed up as 'Verbatim Store and Go' but that does not show that on PCLinuxOS ?..
So it must have some protected hidden partitions that cannot be deleted 

On the Verbatim web site I notice they have a free phone help line, so I will give them a call to shed some light on the mater and report back.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Just after gparted crashes try running the command dmesg and see if it says anything interesting.

Incidentally the command I gave in my previous post was to format a memory stick ENTIRELY to FAT32, no partitions.  There are basically two ways to format a memory stick, like a HDD with partitions or like a floppy with no partitions.  The fact gparted is still crashing is curious indeed.  Is there any particular reason you NEED to partition it?

Generally as a Mandriva user myself if I am having problems I will use an Ubuntu LiveCD and run gparted from there.  It would certainly be curious to know if it still crashes and perhaps even trying to install Ubuntu onto the memory stick.  You boot the LiveCD and there is a special utility to create an Ubuntu USB Stick including partitioning any spare space as FAT32.

I am a carer for my mum and neither of us have very good sleep patterns.  As such I can be up at almost any hour.  

[tickmike]

Well at last I have it sorted and it works ok, shows up in 'pclinuxos control center'>Local disks>manage disk partitions' and Gparted.  

---------------------------------
On a Second new and not yet used memory stick I got for my Daughter at the same time I got mine, I've had a look what 'fdisk' says about the partitions :-

Disk /dev/sde1: 4005 MB, 4005625856 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1017 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7688 * 512 = 3936256 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2c6b7369

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1p1   ?      251825      492702   925929529+  68  Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(116, 100, 32) logical=(251824, 86, 29)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(288, 101, 46) logical=(492701, 32, 59)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sde1p2   ?      173021      243128   269488144   79  Unknown
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(357, 32, 43) logical=(173020, 103, 47)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(0, 13, 10) logical=(243127, 1, 42)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sde1p3   ?       70108      251997   699181456   53  OnTrack DM6 Aux3
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(345, 32, 19) logical=(70107, 109, 18)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(324, 77, 19) logical=(251996, 113, 49)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sde1p4   ?      181404      181406       10668+  49  Unknown
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(87, 1, 0) logical=(181403, 22, 36)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(335, 78, 2) logical=(181405, 118, 44)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

-----------------------------------------------
Running 'Gparted' (which crashes) from a Terminal I get this for this second stick :-

# gparted
======================
libparted : 2.2
======================
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy).  As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.
Can't have a partition outside the disk!
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sdd (Device or resource busy).  As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.
Backtrace has 16 calls on stack:
  16: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0(ped_assert+0x29) [0xb7777b29]
  15: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0 [0xb77accd5]
  14: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0 [0xb77adb47]
  13: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0 [0xb77aef2a]
  12: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0 [0xb777c4be]
  11: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0(ped_disk_add_partition+0x271) [0xb777fe11]
  10: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0 [0xb77b0851]
  9: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0 [0xb77b0a6e]
  8: /usr/lib/libparted.so.0(ped_disk_new+0x79) [0xb7780c49]
  7: /usr/sbin/gpartedbin [0x80901de]
  6: /usr/sbin/gpartedbin [0x80a0b76]
  5: /usr/sbin/gpartedbin [0x80c3b10]
  4: /usr/lib/libglibmm-2.4.so.1 [0xb6e5fb02]
  3: /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 [0xb65a2744]
  2: /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0 [0xb6643885]
  1: /lib/i686/libc.so.6(clone+0x5e) [0xb637657e]
Assertion (head_size <= 63) at dos.c:659 in function probe_partition_for_geom() failed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


Using a virtual XP computer, the second stick shows up as FAT32 with no files / hidden files on it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
With my Daughter using PCLinuxOS on her Laptop I will show her how to sort her new memory stick out now I have learn't so she can learn.  .

Thanks for your help.
 Edit .. I have changed the title of the post to help others with a search. 8)