Just a little guide for reference to formatting hard drives, SD cards, and USB devices in Linux
I recently came across an SD card that had no partitions on it and it was impossible to format on windows because it couldn’t pick up its size. I found that the easiest way was to go on to my Linux box and fix the partitions.
Here are the steps. (For Ubuntu put sudo in front of the commands) fdisk -l (To list the drives and find out which one you want to modify) fdisk /dev/sdb (where /dev/sdb is your device)
Now you will need to check the partitions and add them as necessary. If you need more extensive descriptions add a comment.
p (to print out the partition table) d (delete existing partitions) n (create a new partition) p (primary partition 1 (the first partition) Hit enter to select the first cylinder Hit enter to select the maximum size Hit t to select the partition type, and then L to list the partition types and select one. Now hit w to write the table to the drive.
Posted on: February 24th, 2009 at 7:10 pm Posted by Tim
