(SOLVED) Formatting USB disks

I find this issue hindering my Zorin 12 experience:

For some reason I have lost the format on two of my USB sticks, 32G and 16G - they were both FAT 32 - all I thought I was doing was deleting data.

This whole business of mounting, unmounting and using Disks, Gparted or even Command line to format the disks, using online guides, has left me confused and still with unformatted USB sticks.

I used to use sudo mkdosfs /dev/sdc1 -s 16 -F 32 successfully, but latterly the USB sticks have been popping up as dev/sdb - why should that be?

Can someone help with an easy to follow method, please?

Also, in case I have always been doing it wrong, how am I supposed to use USB sticks?

At the moment I always close my laptop before putting the USB stick in with the laptop lid closed, in suspend. This seemed to give me a guaranteed appearance (mounted?) of the USB stick when I open the lid. Likewise I always remove the sticks with the laptop lid closed in suspend.

Hi, it took me a while to find how to safely remove external hard drive as in the past it was a simple right click. Now it has to be Disks which I have added to my favourites (panel). Select the disk, then use the button with bars on top left for choices and power off. For formatting any disks after sda, including memory sticks will show as the next consecutive hard drive. If you install MultiSystem which allows you to have multi boot isosceles you can also use for saving data too. This prompts you for which USB you want to format so could be a simpler solution? Will post link to package I posted on here as no longer available from soft pediatrician.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8933&hilit=+Multisystem.tar.gz#p43425

I have used Disks to format my USB stick - (unsuccessfully, as far as I can tell, so far).

However, the USB stick does not show up in nautilus after formatting.

I am uncertain whether Disks created a formatted disk and a single partition - or whether I need to partition the drive before or after using Disks, using, say, GParted . This is the nub of my problem.

It is probably simple if I only knew what to do and in what sequence and things like whether I need to power off the usb stick or eject it after formatting.


I am not certain what benefit multisystem would give me and I am baffled by .tz's preferring .debs by far - which I can understand. Disks prompts you for which USB you want to format - although it shows both my USB sticks even when only one is in the machine - strange.

That is odd regarding both showing up - were they cleanly removed?

Here are some screenshots I took a moment ago:









With GParted you have to unmount before formatting I believe - note the two areas available for formatting in disks - I would go for the cog under the USB selected.

Thanks for the screen shots.

I reformatted both USB sticks (tried to) using Disks as per your screenshots (from memory - although I don't think that I used the cog under the USB selected last time.), closed the lid and removed the sticks after the laptop had suspended.

I remembered overnight why I thought of reformatting both sticks. They were the sticks that I put Zorin 12 Ultimate.iso onto to originally load Zorin 12 Ultimate onto my new Kratos laptop. Using the usb sticks did not work in either case and I had to use a DVD to get a successful install.

When I came to delete the .iso files the methodology I found to work in:

search.php?search_id=egosearch

stragely did not work - I could not delete them - whatever I tried.

No bother I thought, I will reformat the USB sticks. I tried initially on my Windows XP machine (For ease of formatting - right click > format > Fat32. This was a no go - Windows can not format this disk, or some such.

No bother I thought, I will use the foolproof sudo mkdosfs /dev/sdc1 -s 16 -F 32 This was no go no such drive, or some such. (perhaps I could use /dev/sdb from what I have seen)

A little bother, I thought, I will use Disks - and that is when the problems started.

I wonder if I should use Synaptic package manager to remove and then reinstall Disks (hopefully getting rid of both USB sticks showing up when only one is installed) and trying again as per your Disks screenshots. I don't think that I used the cog under the USB selected last time.

I presume that I only need to use Disks and can forget about GParted for the time being.


P.S. I could not really see what your last MultiScreen screenshot showed you doing - could you explain that, please?

Well in respect of two usb sticks showing up, remember USB ports have a memory issue so that could be why two were showing up especially if same brand/capacity etc - just guesswork on my part. The last screenshot was not as it was supposed to be as I have already got a MultiSystem USB - basically when you start it up with a USB stick in the machine it will ask which device you wish to format and advises that it will but GRUB on the boot sector - this will only get invoked when booting from the USB as first device - it has never stopped me from adding isos and data at the same time.

I wrote this a few days ago but didn't get around to posting so it may seem a little fragmented given the thread has progressed some what but here it is anyway.

Over last year or so, or since using apps like Etcher etc to create bootable USB sticks I've found it difficult to reformat them with Disks and Gparted, GPT partitions blah blah. Fine if you want to make another bootable USB with Etcher again but tricky to just format!

Recently I started using this in terminal after using USB stick as USB bootable and not being able to reformat it in disks/gparted afterwards:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1k count=2048
X is your USB stick so just change that to sdb or sdc to suit, and you can check that using Disks Utility because you don't want to get this wrong! Then just format as required.
I am guessing this has something to do with UEFI and or apps like Etcher as I don't recall having trouble with Unetbootin but seldom us it now.

Regarding mounting and ummounting:
I think of it this way, in Windows you right clicked and ejected and in Linux you unmount, same thing different, yes? Also you can right click on the drive in file manager and choose 'Unmount' (at least in Caja I can) or click on the mount icon to the right of the drive.

Devices changing from sdb to sdc:
If they were /dev/sdc but now sdb would suggests something has changed in your drive configuration like a disk being removed or added to the machine or the USB port memory tricking the machine maybe?


You need to remove and re-insert the stick sometimes after formatting for Nautilus to see it, or mount it in Disks, 3 icons (see Swarfendors 2nd pic) under your partition are, mount/unmount, delete, and formating options being the 2 gears. The first icon (LH) mount/unmount is a 'box' or 'play' button depending on status of the drive selected at the time, just hover your mouse over them for a pop up.
Lower down you can see 'Contents' and info including mounted status, -Not Mounted or -Mounted at /media/username/ABCDEF-12345...

I would have thought inserting and removing USB drives is best done when the machine is up and running rather than in suspend mode but if it works for you then go ahead, however I wonder if this is the cause of your disk showing up in 'Disks' when it isn't in the machine?
That said I had one remain in 'Disks' but not inserted in the PC, just a few days ago and it didn't go away until restarting the computer, first time that has happened to me.

Thanks MBMz10 and Swarf.

After a little finger trouble, both my 16 and 32 Gb USB sticks are reformatted to FAT32 - RESULT!!!

Hi, Great news ... and how did you do it?