Re: memory stick
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 05:16:43PM -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> s. keeling wrote:
>
> > Colin Cotter <colinjcotter@gmail.com>:
> >> On 7/12/05, Steffen Waldherr <steffen.waldherr@web.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> > If this doesn't work, you might
> >> > want to try "fdisk /dev/sda" to see the partition
> >> > table of the stick and maybe repartition and/or
> >> > reformat it to your needs.
> >
> > Beware, however, others have reported that once reformatted, the stick
> > became a paperweight.
>
> Having done that, I can assure you it's not (quite) true (anyway, they're
> way too light to be good paperweights). If you don't format it correctly,
> _Windows_ will treat it as a paperweight. HP provides a handy reformatting
> tool on their website (google for HPUSBFW.exe) that seems to work to fix up
> memory sticks, if you run into that problem. Been there, done that. :-)
For what it's worth, I have run ``mkfs -t vfat'' on a memory stick once,
after it had accumulated some weird and (as far as I recall) undeletable
files (due to a sequence of events involving unplugging without dismounting,
Windows or Macintosh system freezes, and other things). The stick has
been working normally ever since; I use it almost every day.
However, given the multitude of USB flash drive like devices, I would
not be surprised if this didn't work on other models.
Certainly, for things like USB MP3 sticks, cameras etc. I would not
recommend the mkfs approach, as reformatting them just like that may
e.g. erase configuration information.
Best regards, Jan
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+- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+
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