Re: [gentoo-user] Formating a USB stick

[Daniel Quinn <expendable.0@danielquinn.org>]

On October 7, 2009 10:30:23 pm Mick wrote:
> What's the best way to reformat a USB stick? 

The thing about USB sticks is that if you want to use them to transfer files 
cross-platform (Windows & Mac as well as Linux) you have to use a common 
filesystem.  Typically, I use FAT32 for this since I don't think Windows 
supports anything else that Linux and Mac can both deal with (NTFS support in 
Linux is still unavailable on most machines)

So, if you're going to go with FAT32, you can use fdisk to partition your 
stick as usual, and mark it as type "b" (Win95 FAT32) (there's a few options 
related to FAT32 in there, but I *think* that that's the right one).  Write to 
the stick and exit fdisk.

Then when you're back at the prompt, run:

  # mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1

...if sda is in fact your key.  You can even add "-L LabelName" to attach a 
label to the stick:

  # mkfs.vfat -L "USB Stick" /dev/sda1

I'm pretty sure spaces are ok there... If not, nuke the space ;-)