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(SOLVED) Mount, unmount in Zorin12

Finston Pickle

Thu Apr 05, 2018 11:26:49 am

I guess this is really a Linux question, but I am hitting this problem in in Zorin12.

I have used Gparted to create a new partition formatted to FAT 16 on my 2 Gig SD card - Do I need to create a partition table?

For some reason it has unmounted - I can see the SD card in Gparted and Disks - but file manager, nautilus, can not.

How do I get the SD card to mount, please?

Also, I never have understood this mounting business - it doesn't seem to feature in Windows - why in Linux?

Swarfendor437

Thu Apr 05, 2018 6:19:40 pm

Windows uses it's own version of automount if you think about it - USB drives show up in Computer when inserted and right-clicking and selecting eject gives the unmount command. Let's be clear I am making an analogy here. In respect of FAT16 :

You need to specify filesystem type explicitly:

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda2 /media/external

(you can also try fat, msdos and umsdos). The particular format (FAT32, FAT16 or FAT12) should be detected by the driver automatically, however, you can override it with fat={12|16|32} option.

See man mount for more details on FAT-specific mount options."


[Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/214835/ ... ton#214843]

Finston Pickle

Fri Apr 06, 2018 8:49:59 am

Thanks, Swarf for a speedy reply.


I looked in GParted and found the SD card device identified as FAT16 at /dev/mmcblk0 and idly wondered if I needed to replace /dev/sda2 with /dev/mmcblk0 in sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda2 /media/external

Whilst idly wondering, I thought - what about the "Do I need to create a partition table?" issue. What could possibly go wrong if I created a partition table? Answer everything deleted and now unallocated - bummer!

Fiddled about using "new" and found I could get back to SD card device identified as FAT16 at /dev/mmcblk0

I could not find any way of mounting the device in Gparted so turned to Disks


Clicking onto the SD card, I found an option of Mount in the left hand square icon under the volume information. I clicked this and Bingo - SD card mounted!

For what it is worth the device is now /dev/mmcblk0p1 (Why? - I do not know) and shows in File Manager (Nautilus) as E2C9 - AB8B

Where do all these unrelated identifiers spring from, I wonder?

Problem solved!!

Swarfendor437

Sun Apr 08, 2018 6:11:51 pm

Hi Finston, glad you are sorted - think about it - I suspect your SD is a MicroMemoryCard - hence the labelling 'mmc' and blck0 means 'block0' being the first mmc device recognised in your card reader. ;) :D

mmc.jpg