Can't Format Removable Device

[palsyboy]

I've been successfully using my SanDisk SDMX1 for a few months now and generally enjoy it.

On the bad side, though, its memory has been eaten twice. Both times this happened was when a GUI-based file transfer stalled indefinitely, and I couldn't unmount the device via Kubuntu's Storage Media applet. I finally just had to unplug it from the USB drive. Afterwards, the device listed its available memory as ~950 MB, when it used to read as almost a full gigabyte; this was true even though it held no files at the time, and its config file (settings.dat) was only a few kilobytes in size. I didn't worry about it too much, as most of my mixes are just under 900 MB. However, the exact same thing happened again, and the device now lists its available memory as the following:

"Total: 1 GB
Used 165 MB
Free: 835 MB"

I'm guessing the filesystem is borked, so I tried to format the device as FAT32 using fdisk. I fdisk'd it as its proper /dev/sdeX address, and fdisk said that it had successfully written to the partition table, etc. Yet at no point did the device flash its display LED to indicate USB activity, and its memory remained the same. Apparently, settings.dat was intact, too, as all my user-specific settings remained.

I've tried to use gparted and similar utilties, but they don't even see the device. Perhaps it's because of Kubuntu's funky "/media/devicename" way of doing things.

Does anyone have suggestions as to how to restore my device? If I can find someone with a Windows machine, I may have to swallow my pride and ask them to use it for its formatting ability.

[je_fro]

Try "mount" to see what device is mounted on /media/devicename. Then umount it and try a formatting utility like cfdisk. Sometimes my usb stick gets flaky and I have to "cfdisk /dev/sdh" and then just Write the partition table again. I don't format it or anything...just Write. No data is lost.
Good Luck!

[palsyboy]

Thanks for the quick response!

I ran "sudo mount," and the drive was listed with these details:

/dev/sde1 on /media/SDMX1 type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,quiet,shortname=winnt,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=077,iocharset=utf8)

I unmounted it and ran "sudo cfdisk," deleted the current partition, made a new 1 GB partition, and formatted it as Win95 FAT32. After writing the partition table, I unplugged the device, and it said the exact same thing about only have 835 MB free and still preserved my settings.

I ran the same operation using fdisk with the same results.

[palsyboy]

I swallowed my pride. While at a friend's house today, I asked her if I could try to format the player on her XP machine, and it worked just fine.

I'm just going to use the CLI for file transfers to it from now on.

[knute]

Hrmmm... Did special software come with that device?

I wonder if they would run under wine......

[palsyboy]

I don't believe so, but I could be wrong (if I buy a piece of hardware, I throw its typically MS-centric CD away). One of the primary reasons I bought it was because of it needing no drivers and working on Linux, OSX, or Windows. It just shows up as a removable drive.