I’m having a somewhat weird “problem” with my new USB flash drive (well, it’s not really a problem. Mostly just weird.) I formatted it as FAT32 under Windows, and it has been working fine for a couple months now (both in OpenSUSE and Windows). However, I noticed that every time I plug it in (using OpenSUSE), it shows up as a ‘Generic Flash Drive’, rather than under the label I assigned to it (JOHNS_STUFF). It does recognize the label, though, because the path it mounts to is “/media/JOHNS_STUFF”.
Now, where it gets really weird, though, is when I start the Partitioner: apparently the whole 16 GB is ‘unpartitioned’ - but I partitioned it myself and, moreover, it works perfectly fine! Does anyone know why it exhibits this behavior and, more importantly, whether this is an indication that something is wrong with the file system?
Thanks for your quick reply! It has been working perfectly fine up till now (i.e. I can add/delete files without a problem). The 16 GB flash drive issue you mentioned could be (related to) it - I’ll hang on here!
BTW you first only say that you created a FAT32 fs on it (without any mentioning of partotioning).
Later you say you partitioned it yourself. When you are that certain of what you did, can you also tell how many partitions you created on the device when you did the partitioning and what you did to the other partitions?
There’s only one partition, which is the size of the entire drive (16 GB). However, it doesn’t show up in the Partitioner (there are zero partitions, according to it).
linux-tkow:/home/john # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 16.6 GB, 16567500800 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15800 cylinders, total 32358400 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69686373
This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 ? 778135908 2171303778 696583935+ 66 Unknown
/dev/sdb2 ? 168689524 1971548599 901429538 66 Unknown
/dev/sdb3 ? 1952804724 1953463526 329401+ 65 Novell Netware 386
/dev/sdb4 2885681152 2885736650 27749+ 0 Empty
Partition table entries are not in disk order
My guess is that there are no partitions. You simply created the FAT 32 fs on the whole disk and did no partitioning before it. There is nothing wrong with that. The only thing that is wrong is that you think you partioned it, which is apparently not the case.
Now we have a bit strange siruation here. Normaly, when there is no partition table, fdisk will tell you just that. But in this particular case it seems that the data of your FAT 32 fs that is on the place where a partition table could be, looks a little bit like a real partition table. But fdisk can not realy interprete it, thus it tries and shows data that can not be true. So you better forget about the lines after “This doesn’t look like a partition table”.
BTW, I guess that you do not show all the output of the* fdisk -l*, because info about e.g. sda is missing.
My advice would be that, when you want to partition (or not) and create file systems using MS software, you try to understand how that software functions. You then may understand what you did. I can not help you here, because I know next to nothing about MS software.
To confirm what I tell you, you could, with the device mounted, use
mount | grep JOHN
It will show a line that starts with the device used for mounting on* /media/JOHNS_STUFF*, it will be /dev/sdb (the whole unpartitioned disk) and not */dev/sdb1 *(what it would be when the disk was partitioned into one partition).
I was under the impression that formatting the entire drive was equal to partitioning with just one partition. Apparently it’s not - sorry for that, and thanks for pointing it out. It does indeed show up as /dev/sdb (and not /dev/sdb1) using the mount command, so that’s working just fine.
I’m still wondering why Dolphin keeps calling it ‘Generic Flash Drive’ rather than ‘JOHNS_STUFF’ (another USB flash drive of mine does show up under its label), but that’s not really a big deal (I probably won’t ever have two "Generic Flash Drive"s plugged in at the same time).
P.S.: fdisk -l did indeed show information for /dev/sda as well, but I only copied the /dev/sdb part to my post, and in second instance decided to include the line specifying the command, too. Sorry for the confusion, [strike]I’ll edit my previous post in case anyone else views this thread.[/strike] Apparently I can no longer edit it.
I think you understand now. I know that people do use all sorts of imprecise expressions and then hope that everybody understands the same. But partitioning is just that: organising a disk into 1 or more partitions (you could ask why on would partition into only one partitions, I do not get the knive out of the drawer when I want the pie unpartitioned). Partioning is only a way of offering several disks to the next layer of disk usage, when you have but one physical disk.
Using whole disks or partitions for something is something different. That usage could be a file system of some sort, but many, many other usages are possible. Thus creating a file sytem IS NOT PARTITIONING. It is often called formatting, but then again formatting also means the low level action where a disk is given tracks and blocks (normaly done in the factory and hen also bad spots are identified and alternative blocks asigned).
People are making a mess of it
And yes, you can not edit your post after about 5 mins. One reason is just for what you tried to do. When you change your post, mine will look like nonsense for everybody reading the thread. We want to leave consistent threads for those visiting after us.
I logged a bug back in February(https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=662826) due to 11.4 not being able to open 16GB SDHC cards in USB readers.
A PCI bus connected reader (in a laptop) works fine.
So far, no progress but if you read through the bug you will see that I have had the 16GB SDHC connect, once, after a looooonnnnggggg (5 mins) period of time
Same hardware works fine with 8GB SD cards.
Feels like a USB issue, or more likely USB interface to flash devices issue, but no comments yet from the bug fixers.
