Ahh, this maybe where some of the confusing behavior we were seeing comes from. Let me repeat what I think I understand so I can see if I have it right.
FAT is the same thing as FAT16 FAT is only an option for USB sticks 2 GB or less. You can only format a USB stick larger then 2 GB as FAT32. Some computers will not boot from a FAT32 formatted stick but some will. Thus if you put SoaS onto a 4 GB USB it will fail on some computers and not others. A partition allows you to have one part of the USB formatted differently then another part. Thus a work around if you want to use a USB stick larger then 2GB would be to create a smaller partition for the boot area and format that as FAT. Let me know what I have right and wrong! Thanks!! Caroline On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Martin Langhoff <[email protected] > wrote: > On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Caroline Meeks > <[email protected]> wrote: > > trying to tease out what all the different failure mechanisms are > > One failure mode I know of: Most USB sticks come pre-formatted from > factory in a funny "FAT-16 LBA" partition mode and fs format. If you > remove the partition and recreated it, most tools (and users!) will > default to FAT-32 for new FAT partitions. > > And oftentimes BIOSes can't handle booting from FAT-32. I've spotted > this on my (earlyish) EEE 701 and I think OFW also has (had?) this > limitation. > > So if you have a non-booting disk, it's worthwhile asking fdisk about > the partition mode, and check what the file utility says about the > contents of the block device (in the partition). > > cheers, > > > > martin > -- > [email protected] > [email protected] -- School Server Architect > - ask interesting questions > - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first > - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff > -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove [email protected] 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax
_______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
