Quote:
Originally Posted by CIWS
Oh and by the way Mr. tech if it's already formatted fat32 it's been partitioned, or I bet you knew that didn't you.  |
You have no business rolling your eyes when you give out dead wrong information.
FAT32 is a file system, and independent of partitioning. It can go on either a partition, or an entire
unpartitioned device.
Most of the time, flash media is partitioned, and the FAT32 file system goes onto the first partition. But that's not always the case. Because the partitioning takes up sectors 0-62 on the device,
some manufacturers choose to format the entire drive, unpartitioned, as FAT32.
Here's an example of images of two flash drives - both PNY 4 GB drives.
Both are FAT32. One is partitioned, and the other one isn't:
# fdisk -l /dev/md127 /dev/loop1
Disk /dev/md127: 4008 MB, 4008706048 bytes
93 heads, 53 sectors/track, 1588 cylinders, total 7829504 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/md127p1 * 63 7829503 3914720+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Disk /dev/loop1: 4008 MB, 4008706048 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 487 cylinders, total 7829504 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
Both of them are mounted as FAT32 (vfat):
# df -t vfat
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/md127p1 3907072 4 3907068 1% /mnt/md127p1
/dev/loop1 3907104 4 3907100 1% /mnt/loop1
Both of the drives work as FAT32, and you cannot easily tell the difference in Windows (well, one has 32 kB more free). They both work. They're both FAT32.
But only one of them works in the X1 - the top one.
While Windows' "Format" will partition the disk too, the manufacturer's format as FAT32 doesn't necessarily do that.
tl;dr, don't care about technical stuff:
Most flash drives work out of the box in the X1, but not all.
If it works in Windows but not in the X1, reformat it, and it will almost certainly start working. (You'll lose all the content when formatting, and have to fill it again.)