Re: Access a USB drive from Linux and Windows

From: Dances With Crows (danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows_at_usa.net)
Date: 11/13/03 

Date: 13 Nov 2003 05:55:11 GMT

On 12 Nov 2003 19:59:46 -0800, R. Hixon staggered into the Black Sun and
said:
> I want to be able to attach a USB drive to Red Hat Linux 8.3

Gonna be tough, since Redhat 8.3 doesn't exist.

> write files to it and then be able to take the USB drive to a Windows
> machine and read the files.

Shouldn't be a problem; USB Mass Storage devices that follow specs are
well-supported and so are FAT32 filesystems.

> I have a USB drive and I've been trying to achieve this goal without
> success. The drive works because I have been able to access it from
> Windows

So what happens when you try to mount it under Linux?

> tried formatting a 31 MB partition on partition 1 using Windows and
> then taking it to Linux. Linux wouldn't let me mount the volume.

What was the output from dmesg when you tried?

> Windows wouldn't let me partition the entire drive as a FAT partition.

If the space is smaller than 2G, it should be FAT16 (type 0x06), larger
than 2G but smaller than 8G, it should be FAT32 (type 0x0b), if it's
larger than 8G, it should be FAT32-LBA (type 0x0c). If you get the
types wrong, 'Doze can get annoyed and randomly scribble on your data.

> I tried using Linux fdisk and mkfs -t msdos /dev/sda1. That resulted
> in error "Attempting to create a too large file system". Any ideas?

mkdosfs -F32 /dev/NNN on partitions larger than 2G, since mkdosfs uses
FAT16 by default. HTH, 

-- 
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin /    mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com     /  "He is a rhythmic movement of the
-----------------------------/    penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL

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