Reformatting a USB stick that shows up as two devices?

[James Tappin]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:19:59 +0000
Chris G <cl at isbd.net> wrote:

CG> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 09:12:34AM -0500, Mark Haney wrote:
CG> > Adam Funk wrote:
CG> > > I have a USB memory stick that shows up as two drive devices
CG> > > (/dev/sdc and /dev/sdd, along with partitions /dev/sdc1 and
CG> > > /dev/sdc2).  Is it possible to reformat the whole thing into
CG> > > one?
CG> > > 
CG> > > 
CG> > 
CG> > It's certainly possible.  I would just use fdisk to delete both
CG> > existing  partitions and create a single partition that covers the
CG> > entire drive. 
CG> 
CG> If the USB stick *really* appears as /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd it's two
CG> drives so that fdisk will see two 'entire drives' to partition.
CG> Deleting the partitions doesn't help at all.
CG> 
CG> I suspect though that the symptoms are due to un-removed remains
CG> from previous times the USB stick has been plugged in.
CG> 

Are you sure it's not showing up as /dev/scd0 (a "CD-rom") and /dev/sdd,
which happens sometimes for my SanDisk Cruzer?

Apparently the cdrom bit is some bit of jiggery-pokery for encrypting
the volume in Windoze, and when it's mounted on Windows or Solaris the
CD always shows but on Linux only occasionally. I've never figured out
what to do with it as the CD bit is (I think) in ROM. Annoyingly when
the CD does appear no icon shows up on the KDE desktop to unmount the
USB stick only the CD part (and df shows that unlike a multi-partion
external disk unmounting one bit doesn't unmount the other).


-- 
+------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+
| James Tappin           | School of Physics & Astronomy |  O__    |
| sjt at star.sr.bham.ac.uk | University of Birmingham      | --  \/` |
| Ph: 0121-414-6462. Fax: 0121-414-3722                  |         |
+--------------------------------------------------------+---------+