# Can't format Disney Mix Stick w/Gentoo [Solved]

## airman

We got a Disney Mix Stick for Christmas, basically a Disney-branded 256MB MP3 player with an external SD card port. I had assumed that it would behave like a typical thumb drive, but not so. My Gentoo (2.6.17-r8 kernel) system recognizes the hardware just fine using udev. The device appears in /dev/disk/by-id.

However, when attempting to erase, and recreate the partition, I am foiled. Here is the process I used:

1. Recreate a single FAT32 partition on the device using cfdisk. No errors.

2. Format the partition using mkdosfs. No errors.

3. Attempt to mount the device. Error.

```
d4 ~ # mkdosfs /dev/sde1

mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)

d4 ~ # mount /dev/sde1 ~/xxx

mount: /dev/sde1: can't read superblock

d4 ~ #
```

```
d4 ~ # dmesg|tail

sde: Write Protect is off

sde: Mode Sense: 3e 00 00 00

sde: assuming drive cache: write through

 sde: sde1

SCSI device sde: 125760 2048-byte hdwr sectors (258 MB)

sde: Write Protect is off

sde: Mode Sense: 3e 00 00 00

sde: assuming drive cache: write through

 sde: sde1

FAT: logical sector size too small for device (logical sector size = 512)

d4 ~ #
```

```
d4 ~ # fdisk -l /dev/sde

Note: sector size is 2048 (not 512)

Disk /dev/sde: 257 MB, 257556480 bytes

8 heads, 62 sectors/track, 253 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 496 * 2048 = 1015808 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sde1               1         253      250852    b  W95 FAT32

d4 ~ #
```

```
d4 ~ # ll /dev/disk/by-id

total 0

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Jan 14 14:11 usb-DISNEY_MIX_STICK_4002F9D69CAA8995 -> ../../sde

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan 14 14:21 usb-DISNEY_MIX_STICK_4002F9D69CAA8995-part1 -> ../../sde1

d4 ~ #
```

Does the "logical sector size too small for device" error possibly give a clue?

When I boot up Windows, the device formats without a problem, and then mounts fine under Gentoo, except that the device that gets mounted after the Windows format is /dev/sde, NOT /dev/sde1. In fact, Linux doesn't see a partititon on the device, just the device itself.

This all seems very strange to me, and abnormal. It does bother me that Windows can easily format a device that I an unable in Linux. Backward. BTW, I have various other thumb drives, all of which behave normally under Gentoo.

What could be occurring with this Disney Mix Stick?Last edited by airman on Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:04 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## airman

OK, never mind the part about Linux mounting the device. After playing around more with it, and formatting it again in Windows, then going back to Linux, Linux has mounted /dev/sde1 as expected. So it's not consistent. Strange.

Anyway, after the Windows format, all works normally under Linux. But I still can't format and use it exclusively under Linux.

----------

## cyrillic

 *airman wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> d4 ~ # dmesg|tail
> 
> ...

 

Maybe matching the hardware sector size to the FAT block size would help.

```
# mkdosfs -F 32 -S 2048 -n MICKEYMOUSE /dev/hde1 
```

----------

## airman

```
d4 ~ # fdisk -l /dev/sde

Note: sector size is 2048 (not 512)

Disk /dev/sde: 257 MB, 257556480 bytes

8 heads, 62 sectors/track, 253 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 496 * 2048 = 1015808 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sde1               1        1014     1005764    b  W95 FAT32

d4 ~ #
```

```
d4 ~ # mkdosfs -F 32 -S 2048 -n DONALD /dev/sde1

mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)

WARNING: Not enough clusters for a 32 bit FAT!

d4 ~ #
```

----------

## airman

Here's the same thing with the -v flag:

```
d4 ~ # mkdosfs -v -F 32 -S 2048 -n DONALD /dev/sde1

mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)

WARNING: Not enough clusters for a 32 bit FAT!

/dev/sde1 has 8 heads and 62 sectors per track,

logical sector size is 2048,

using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 502882 sectors;

file system has 2 32-bit FATs and 8 sectors per cluster.

FAT size is 123 sectors, and provides 62825 clusters.

Volume ID is 45ab1463, volume label DONALD     .

d4 ~ #
```

----------

## airman

Here's what happens when I try to make it a Reiser FS:

```
d4 ~ # mkreiserfs -b 2048 /dev/sde1

mkreiserfs 3.6.19 (2003 www.namesys.com)

A pair of credits:

SuSE (www.suse.com)  pays for continuing work on journaling for version 3, paid

for much of the previous version 3 work, and is paying for Chris and Jeff to do

V3 maintenance. Reiserfs integration in their distro is consistently solid, and

they were key to our becoming widely used.

Chris Mason wrote the journaling code for V3,  which was enormously more useful

to users than just waiting until  we could create a wandering log filesystem as

Hans would have unwisely done without him.

Jeff Mahoney optimized the bitmap  scanning code for V3,  and performed the big

endian cleanups.

Guessing about desired format.. Kernel 2.6.17-gentoo-r8 is running.

Format 3.6 with standard journal

Count of blocks on the device: 502880

Number of blocks consumed by mkreiserfs formatting process: 8258

Blocksize: 2048

Hash function used to sort names: "r5"

Journal Size 8193 blocks (first block 34)

Journal Max transaction length 512

inode generation number: 0

UUID: 6b896101-fb05-4486-ab16-7490e4a14d8a

ATTENTION: YOU SHOULD REBOOT AFTER FDISK!

        ALL DATA WILL BE LOST ON '/dev/sde1'!

Continue (y/n):y

Initializing journal - 0%....20%....40%....60%....80%....100%

The problem has occurred looks like a hardware problem. If you have

bad blocks, we advise you to get a new hard drive, because once you

get one bad block  that the disk  drive internals  cannot hide from

your sight,the chances of getting more are generally said to become

much higher  (precise statistics are unknown to us), and  this disk

drive is probably not expensive enough  for you to you to risk your

time and  data on it.  If you don't want to follow that follow that

advice then  if you have just a few bad blocks,  try writing to the

bad blocks  and see if the drive remaps  the bad blocks (that means

it takes a block  it has  in reserve  and allocates  it for use for

of that block number).  If it cannot remap the block,  use badblock

option (-B) with  reiserfs utils to handle this block correctly.

bread: Cannot read the block (502879): (Input/output error).

Aborted

d4 ~ #
```

----------

## airman

I just formatted the device again in Windows, and now KDE automounts /dev/sde as the partition again instead of /dev/sde1. Go figure.

```
d4 ~ # mount

  (snip)

/dev/sde on /media/disk type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=lower)

d4 ~ #
```

```
d4 ~ # fdisk -l /dev/sde

Note: sector size is 2048 (not 512)

Disk /dev/sde: 257 MB, 257556480 bytes

8 heads, 62 sectors/track, 253 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 496 * 2048 = 1015808 bytes

This doesn't look like a partition table

Probably you selected the wrong device.

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sde1   ?     1568823     3870254  2283019262   72  Unknown

Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

     phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(1568822, 3, 11)

Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:

     phys=(357, 32, 45) logical=(3870253, 0, 51)

Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/sde2   ?      340100     4243383  3872056480   65  Novell Netware 386

Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

     phys=(288, 115, 43) logical=(340099, 6, 47)

Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:

     phys=(367, 114, 50) logical=(4243382, 4, 42)

Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/sde3   ?     3769923     7673205  3872056384   79  Unknown

Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

     phys=(366, 32, 33) logical=(3769922, 2, 30)

Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:

     phys=(357, 32, 43) logical=(7673204, 7, 39)

Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/sde4   ?     5817906     5818018      110998    d  Unknown

Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

     phys=(372, 97, 50) logical=(5817905, 4, 25)

Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:

     phys=(0, 10, 0) logical=(5818017, 3, 33)

Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

d4 ~ #
```

----------

## cyrillic

 *airman wrote:*   

> I just formatted the device again in Windows, and now KDE automounts /dev/sde as the partition again instead of /dev/sde1. Go figure. 

 

It looks like this time Windows used a superfloppy (partitionless) format, instead of a harddisk format.  It should work either way, but maybe your device is very picky.

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## airman

A partitionless format. Interesting. I'll read up on that for posterity purposes. Still can't figure out why my FAT32 partition (or ReiserFS partition for that matter) won't mount when created under Linux...

(still researching)

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## airman

Even the superfloppy mode won't mount.

```
d4 ~ # mkdosfs -I /dev/sde

mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)

d4 ~ # mount /dev/sde ~/xxx

mount: /dev/sde: can't read superblock

d4 ~ #
```

----------

## airman

OK, looks like I got it to format and mount (after much experimentation).

```
d4 ~ # mkdosfs -I -S 2048 /dev/sdf

mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)

d4 ~ # mount /dev/sdf xxx

d4 ~ #
```

```
d4 ~ # mount

  (snip)

/dev/sdf on /root/xxx type vfat (rw)

d4 ~ #
```

I've never had this many problems before simply attempting to use a USB flash device. Wow.

Thanks cyrillic for your help!

----------

