Monday, February 20, 2006

Formatting USB Flash Disk for VFAT filesystem

Here are the steps I took to format my USB flash disk for VFAT filesystem. I chose this filesystem because it is supported in Windows and also in Linux :

  • Unmount the usb disk (if it is still in use) :
# umount /dev/sda1
  • Format the usb disk :
# mkfs.vfat -c -n TEDI /dev/sda1
mkfs.vfat 2.10 (22 Sep 2003)
  • Check the usb disk :
# dosfsck -vV /dev/sda1
dosfsck 2.10 (22 Sep 2003)
dosfsck 2.10, 22 Sep 2003, FAT32, LFN
Checking we can access the last sector of the filesystem
Boot sector contents:
System ID "mkdosfs"
Media byte 0xf8 (hard disk)
512 bytes per logical sector
4096 bytes per cluster
1 reserved sector
First FAT starts at byte 512 (sector 1)
2 FATs, 16 bit entries
125440 bytes per FAT (= 245 sectors)
Root directory starts at byte 251392 (sector 491)
512 root directory entries
Data area starts at byte 267776 (sector 523)
62578 data clusters (256319488 bytes)
32 sectors/track, 16 heads
0 hidden sectors
501148 sectors total
Starting check/repair pass.
Checking for unused clusters.
Starting verification pass.
Checking for unused clusters.
/dev/sda1: 2 files, 0/62578 clusters

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