It might look like an easy thing to do, but I'm experiencing problems in formatting a USB drive so it can be used in Live format. I've used 8 and 16GB USB drives, with the same result. Here's what I do:
- unmount the drive:
sudo umount /dev/sdb
- format the drive:
sudo mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sdb
- partitioning the drive:
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
, followed by this sequence of commands:n p 1 [intro] +7G a w
The process seems to work fine, and it exists with the message:
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
(Also tried +4G
, and changing to FAT16 and FAT32, same result.)
lsblk
now shows this information:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 238,5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 226,6G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 1K 0 part
└─sda5 8:5 0 11,9G 0 part [SWAP]
sdb 8:16 1 14,5G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 1 7G 0 part
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
I take the drive out and plug it again, but nothing happens. The drive is not automatically mounted, as expected, and it does not show up when I run unetbootin (typically there I can see the sdb
or the sdb1
drives that come already installed in a new USB drive).
So, at this point I don't know how to proceed. When I create the Live version in a drive that has not been partitioned (writing to sdb
) and try to boot with it, it will say that the drive is not a bootable one.
Have made an extensive search in this and other forums (including this), but can't find the right information.