On Thursday 08 October 2009, Daniel Quinn wrote:
> 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 ;-)

Thanks for this.

I was thinking that mkdos -F 16 would restore the original, rather than a 
different version.  The stick will be used in MSWindows mainly.
-- 
Regards,
Mick