Formatting a USB to FAT16 on Moblin or Ubuntu NBR

Question

Trying to format a USB to FAT16 on Moblin or Ubuntu NBR

Why? FAT16 apparently needed while following this tutorial on creating a Parted Magic LiveUSB http://partedmagic.com/documentation/130-creating-the-liveusb.html

pendrivelinux.com/restoring-your-usb-key-partition and simplehelp.net/2009/04/24/… are the best i've found so far - but ubuntu doesn't have unmount

Borealid · Answer 1 · 2010-08-10 03:33:08Z

up vote 0 down vote accepted

sudo mkfs.vfat -F 16 <device>

answered Aug 10 '10 at 3:33

	on moblin: i get command not found. fdisk also command not found. – ina Aug 10 '10 at 5:59
	on ubuntu 10 nbr i can't easily reference the device - is there a way to list where the usb is? – ina Aug 10 '10 at 7:51
	"unable to open /dev/sdb" – ina Aug 10 '10 at 8:16
	You should probably be formatting the partition, the the whole thing. After plugging in your USB device and waiting for it to settle, unmount it and then type `dmesg`. The last lines should show you the partition (ie `/dev/sdb1`) which was mounted. Format that as root. – Borealid Aug 10 '10 at 13:34

feedback

ina · Answer 2 · 2010-08-11 03:05:50Z

It looks like Ubuntu NBR and Moblin don't have unmount commands with their visual Mac-like interfaces...

Ubuntu Netbook Remiz 10 - System > Admin > Disk Utility. Click unmount. Click Format Drive.
do the mkfs suggested above.
sudo mkdosfs -I /dev/sdb

2 Answers