Someone has given me a Kingston Mini Slim Datatraveller 8Gb flash memory stick to 'fix'.
She complains that it 'doesn't work under Vista but works OK under XP'. She has tried multiple systems.
I've been here before with USB sticks with a funny format. Sure enough FBSD 8.0 reports:
and, with the Mtools installed and /dev/da0s1 configured as u:
Hmmm, wonky formatting, "bad Kingston, bad". What to do? Well the first thing I tried was copious Googling. Lots of matches but little constructive advice. Next try, reformatting with the HP tool using XP. Some improvement, no complaints about the partition start, but still a problem with the partition end. Mtools still complains about the number of sectors (now slightly different) not being a multiple of the number of sectors-per-track.
Maybe the problem with Vista is fixed, maybe not. I won't be happy until there are no error messages. I'm difficult like that.
So, long story short (tl;dr as they say) how do I format a USB stick with a 'tidy' FAT32 format that starts and ends on a track boundary?
She complains that it 'doesn't work under Vista but works OK under XP'. She has tried multiple systems.
I've been here before with USB sticks with a funny format. Sure enough FBSD 8.0 reports:
Code:
ugen1.3: <Kingston> at usbus1
umass0: <Kingston DT Mini Slim, class 0/0, rev 2.00/2.00, addr 3> on usbus1
umass0: SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
umass0:0:0:-1: Attached to scbus0
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <Kingston DT Mini Slim 1.00> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 1.000MB/s transfers
da0: 7696MB (15761408 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 981C)
GEOM: da0: partition 1 does not start on a track boundary.
GEOM: da0: partition 1 does not end on a track boundary.
and, with the Mtools installed and /dev/da0s1 configured as u:
Code:
mdir u:
Total number of sectors (15759336) not a multiple of sectors per track (63)!
Hmmm, wonky formatting, "bad Kingston, bad". What to do? Well the first thing I tried was copious Googling. Lots of matches but little constructive advice. Next try, reformatting with the HP tool using XP. Some improvement, no complaints about the partition start, but still a problem with the partition end. Mtools still complains about the number of sectors (now slightly different) not being a multiple of the number of sectors-per-track.
Maybe the problem with Vista is fixed, maybe not. I won't be happy until there are no error messages. I'm difficult like that.
So, long story short (tl;dr as they say) how do I format a USB stick with a 'tidy' FAT32 format that starts and ends on a track boundary?