I have a few USB sticks which I use in my car to allow me to listen to things like iPlayer downloads.
But only one of the three is recognised by the car now. I've reformatted them under both linux and Windows 8.1 on my wife's laptop but the problem persists.
The thing that the two 'failing' discs have in common is that I have also in the past used them on my tv to record stuff. The tv reformats them to NTFS whereas the car expects them to be FAT32.
Are there are utilities I can use to see what might be different between the various sticks?
For info, one of the 'failing' discs is of the same type as that which *is* recognised in the car whereas the other disc is an almost new 32GB stick from Maplins.
On 07/01/15 12:12, Chris Walker wrote:
I have a few USB sticks which I use in my car to allow me to listen to things like iPlayer downloads.
But only one of the three is recognised by the car now. I've reformatted them under both linux and Windows 8.1 on my wife's laptop but the problem persists.
The thing that the two 'failing' discs have in common is that I have also in the past used them on my tv to record stuff. The tv reformats them to NTFS whereas the car expects them to be FAT32.
Are there are utilities I can use to see what might be different between the various sticks?
For info, one of the 'failing' discs is of the same type as that which *is* recognised in the car whereas the other disc is an almost new 32GB stick from Maplins.
gparted and fdisk spring to mind. You say they've been formatted as NTFS. Just that? My first thought was that there's been a re-partitioning done creating a partition and/or a partition table and/or MBR that the car doesn't understand. I'd be tempted to delete all partions on the USB disks, create new FAT32 partitions and old-fashioned partition table. I think you could do these things with gparted and fdisk, but I'm not entirely sure how, but I'm sure there are many how-toos and manual pages that will explain it. Good luck.
Steve
On 7 January 2015 at 16:57, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
gparted and fdisk spring to mind.
I also find "file -s" to be useful, as in: sudo file -s /dev/sdc*
One thing I have noted is that sometimes USB sticks get formatted without a partition table (ie /dev/sdX is formatted rather than /dev/sdX1, and the latter therefore does not exist). Not everything supports this.
Also worth noting is that you can copy the partition table from one device (assuming it has one!) to another with: sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdX | sudo sfdisk /dev/sdY .. substituting X and Y as appropriate.
On Thu, 8 Jan 2015 09:49:19 +0000 Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk wrote:
On 7 January 2015 at 16:57, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
gparted and fdisk spring to mind.
I also find "file -s" to be useful, as in: sudo file -s /dev/sdc*
One thing I have noted is that sometimes USB sticks get formatted without a partition table (ie /dev/sdX is formatted rather than /dev/sdX1, and the latter therefore does not exist). Not everything supports this.
I have now identified the problem. The 'working' stick is formatted to MBR whereas the non-working sticks i.e. not seen by my car but functioning as normal in any computer I've tried, have GUID partition table.
The partitions are as you would expect. To fix the problem I did a google search for 'convert gpt to mbr' and after a bit of a struggle (there was more struggle trying to find a solution than actually doing the conversion), my car now recognises one of the sticks. I've only tried one in the car as it was late and didn't want to disturb my neighbours by having music blasting out of the audio system. I'll try the second one today.
As I like to be able to see all my files and do any work from anywhere i.e. both linux and Windows, I tried converting the second stick on my wife's Windows 8.1 laptop. Using similar commands to linux I was able to convert that one using a command called diskpart. That's the one I have yet to try in the car.
Also worth noting is that you can copy the partition table from one device (assuming it has one!) to another with: sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdX | sudo sfdisk /dev/sdY .. substituting X and Y as appropriate.
If I copy the partition table, do I end up with two sticks with the same volume name? I realise I could easily edit that post-copy, but just wondering.
Thanks to you both for your thoughts and suggestions.
On 8 January 2015 at 11:05, Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
(there was more struggle trying to find a solution than actually doing the conversion),
Can you describe the solution (or link to it) for the benefit of anyone else with the same problem who stumbles upon this thread via Google etc?
If I copy the partition table, do I end up with two sticks with the same volume name? I realise I could easily edit that post-copy, but just wondering.
As far as I know the volume name is separate. If you run sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdX .. and look at the output you can see what information the dump contains; piping it back into sfdisk for the second disk just passes those details over to the new disk.
That said, sfdisk doesn't work with GPT configurations which it sounds like you have. [s]gdisk does but I haven't found the equivalent way to dump partition information (indeed gfdisk -d deletes partitions, a completely different thing!)
On Thu, 8 Jan 2015 12:30:18 +0000 Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk wrote:
On 8 January 2015 at 11:05, Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
(there was more struggle trying to find a solution than actually doing the conversion),
Can you describe the solution (or link to it) for the benefit of anyone else with the same problem who stumbles upon this thread via Google etc?
I used gdisk (it was already installed) following the instructions here :- http://www.ehow.com/how_12119053_convert-gpt-mbr-linux.html
If I run the gdisk command now it says :- /dev/sdd1 Partition table scan: MBR: MBR only BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: not present
*************************************************************** Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format in memory. THIS OPERATION IS POTENTIALLY DESTRUCTIVE! Exit by typing 'q' if you don't want to convert your MBR partitions to GPT format! ***************************************************************
Command (? for help):
=============== At this point I will now quit of course as the stick is in the correct format for me. I did remember to move everything off the stick *before* I tried mucking around with the partitions ;-)
On Thu, 8 Jan 2015 12:30:18 +0000 Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk wrote:
On 8 January 2015 at 11:05, Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
(there was more struggle trying to find a solution than actually doing the conversion),
Can you describe the solution (or link to it) for the benefit of anyone else with the same problem who stumbles upon this thread via Google etc?
I've had to go back to this as I have another stick which despite doing all manner of work on it, refuses to be recognised by my car.
If I copy the partition table, do I end up with two sticks with the same volume name? I realise I could easily edit that post-copy, but just wondering.
Rather than copying a partition table, can I dd one drive to another (they're both 32GB sticks albeit sold by different companies) and still expect the drive to work?
The two drives which work are PNY devices like these - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-pny-key-attache-usb-20-read-25mb-s-write... whereas the other disk is a 32GB stick from Maplins.
On 10/02/15 17:57, Chris Walker wrote:
I've had to go back to this as I have another stick which despite doing all manner of work on it, refuses to be recognised by my car.Rather than copying a partition table, can I dd one drive to another (they're both 32GB sticks albeit sold by different companies) and still expect the drive to work? The two drives which work are PNY devices like these - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-pny-key-attache-usb-20-read-25mb-s-write... whereas the other disk is a 32GB stick from Maplins.
Provided that they're exactly the same size, or the destination is larger than the source, I would have thought it would work.
Suck it and see - what have you got to lose?
Steve
On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 23:41:57 +0000 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 10/02/15 17:57, Chris Walker wrote:
I've had to go back to this as I have another stick which despite doing all manner of work on it, refuses to be recognised by my car.Rather than copying a partition table, can I dd one drive to another (they're both 32GB sticks albeit sold by different companies) and still expect the drive to work? The two drives which work are PNY devices like these - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-pny-key-attache-usb-20-read-25mb-s-write... whereas the other disk is a 32GB stick from Maplins.
Provided that they're exactly the same size, or the destination is larger than the source, I would have thought it would work.
Suck it and see - what have you got to lose?
A USB stick? ;-)
I thought that if I took a dd image of the destination (the Maplin stick) I would be able to restore that if things didn't work out. If I then compare filesizes of the PNY disk and the Maplin disk, they're about a gig different with the PNY being larger. So it looks as though it won't work and I'll have to find another way.
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Chris Walker -
Mark Rogers -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk