Speaking of formatting stick drives, I picked up a couple of SanDisk 4.0GB Cruzer Minisn apple on ebay for $150 + shipping (which I thought was an Ok deal since they are listed anywhere from about $250 to $300+ although I could have picked up a lot of 10 for $45 each if I wanted to mess around reselling them)... Anyway I got one for me and one for my wife who runs a Powerbook. Her computer had trouble recognizing it, so she reformatted it to MS-DOS (w/o asking my advice!)... Now, when you plug it into the computer it reads 1TB... I know that's not right... I tried to *fix* it with my XP system & I discovered that XP does not have fdisk... When I plug her stick drive into my XP machine it also shows it as having 1TB and the format program just doesn't do anything, it kind of just hangs there or something. Another thing is, if I plug my (not hers) Cruzer Mini into my XP machine it shows 4GB, but if my wife plugs my stick into her Powerbook it shows 1TB on her machine... I spent a number of hours on this *unexpected* problem (I much prefer expected problems ;) and it's hard to find much info on it, it's hard to find the time to mess around with it too... I don't know if I like this 4GB flashdrive or not... In their FAQs they point out that the data stored on it should be good for at least 10 years... Makes me wonder... So, it's not that great for backup, but possibly good for transferring files, or temporary backups... It's a little erratic on my computers though. Sometimes I plug it in and it's not recognized, so I just pull it out and plug it back in and then it's recognized on the 2nd try (I've had this happen a number of times now)... I guess I can get used to that even if I don't understand it. I did find a program that is supposed to be good for formatting flash drives, I haven't tried it though. I think I'll contact SanDisk tech support before I do anything rash. Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device (It's supposed to work with non HP drives) http://66.249.93.104/search?hl=en&lr=&q=xp+fdisk+sandisk+flash+drive&btnG=Search Wayne Jr
On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:19:16 -0800, Carl Lowenstein wrote: > On 1/29/06, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Sun, Jan 29, 2006 at 02:08:24PM -0800, Carl Lowenstein wrote: <snip> >> I thought that might be the problem. Can they be reformatted? >> > > Sure. /sbin/fdisk # to change the partition table. > /sbin/mke2fs # to re"format". > > carl > -- > carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
