Ubuntu

Formating USB drive

Asked by Rich.b

Dell 2400 Dimension OS Ubuntu 12.04

Corsair 520MB Flash Voyager..............Trying to format drive with ext4 format

Please could advise what I am doing wrong

richard@richard-desktop:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 75481116 51063732 20583072 72% /
udev 498368 4 498364 1% /dev
tmpfs 203364 804 202560 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 508404 216 508188 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdb1 507592 0 507592 0% /media/8889-062E
richard@richard-desktop:~$ sudo umount /dev/sdb1
[sudo] password for richard:
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for richard:
richard@richard-desktop:~$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
/dev/sdb1 is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
richard@richard-desktop:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1
mount: /dev/sdb1 already mounted or /media/8889-062E busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sdb1 is already mounted on /media/8889-062E
richard@richard-desktop:~$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
Could not stat /dev/sdb1 --- No such file or directory

The device apparently does not exist; did you specify it correctly?
richard@richard-desktop:~$

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David Pires (slickymaster) said : 		#1

Instead of doing it through CLI, why don't you use GParted?

GParted should be installed by default in your Ubuntu system, but in case it isn't just run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install gparted

After that, just open Gparted, find your USB drive in the drop-down box at the top right of the GParted window, right-click on the unallocated grey block and click New. In the window that pops up, change the File System to ext4. Click the green checkmark and then the Apply button to apply the changes.

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Rich.b (aybi30) said : 		#2

Thanks for that I will have a look at Gparted

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Rich.b (aybi30) said : 		#3

I can see as you said

unallocated 3.94MiB
and
/dev/sdb1 ext4 29.95GiB 653.94 MiB used 29.31 GiB unused

It was already ext4 formated

Not sure if I wish change format how to do this?

How do I put Linux Mint 15 iso file onto the usb drive?

Thanks for your help very usefull

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David Pires (slickymaster) said : 		#4

Use Unetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/) to create a bootable USB stick from an Linux Mint 15 ISO file. It supports Mint 15 according to its listings of OS supported.

Download Unetbootin, make the file executable (using either the command chmod +x ./unetbootin-linux, or going to Properties > Permissions and checking "Execute"), then start the application, you will be prompted for your password to grant the application administrative rights, then the main dialog will appear, where you select a distribution and install target (USB Drive or Hard Disk), then reboot when prompted.

Note that the USB drive must be formatted as FAT32, otherwise it won't be listed.

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