USB drives

[Cyber Source]

Yes, lsusb is a probably the best way to look at the device, it will 
give you the vendor and product number from which you can google to find 
out what the device is more precisely.
As far as partitioning it, I've done it but like Dave suggested, I would 
kept it with the type that it was originally. I usually see them to be 
FAT16 and until they come out with flash drives in excess of 2GB, I 
don't think you'll see that change. I also wonder why I see those drives 
usually with just a 4th partition, i.e. /dev/sda4. You could experiment 
with it by making other partitions/splitting them but who know, that 
device number might be where the windows driver looks for it, but give 
it a shot, if it doesnt work well you can always repartition back to the 
way it was.

Dave Andruczyk wrote:

>--- green_man <green_man at bluefrog.biz> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Is there any way in Linux to find out who manufactured a device ?
>>I have a USB flash drive that works perfrectly with any one of the 
>>several Knoppix/Debian based live Cds using the 2.4x kernels.
>>I plug it in and it shows up in emelFM as sda1, and I can mount it, read 
>>and write to it. Truly plug and play.
>>However in Win 98SE, device manager wants a driver for it, but doesn't 
>>have one.
>>The vendors advice is go to the manufacturer's web site and download the 
>>driver, but I have no idea who made the thing.
>>All it says on the outside is "Flash Drive USB 2.0 128MB"
>>It must be stored somewhere in the device, somehow, so that windows 
>>knows what driver to look for.
>>    
>>
>
>Try lsusb or lsusb -v (as root)
>
>  
>
>>Also, since I am completely ignorant of how these things work, can they 
>>be re-partitioned ?
>>    
>>
>
>As far as I know they can,  but then they may NOT be readable in windows esp if
>you use a different filesystem than FAT/FAT32. Whatever you do do NOT use a
>journalling filesystem on a flash drive as the journal activity will
>prematurely "wear out" the flash drive.   (flash devices have finite numbers of
>write cycles)  the safe bet is to use EXT2 or FAT32.
>
>  
>
>>Could I take a 256 MB flash drive and split it into sda1 and sda2 of 128 
>>MB each, or is the format permanently set ?
>>    
>>
>
>I believe that IS possible,  I unfortuately don't have one here to test
>against...  I think that it may NOT work in windows though,  you'd have to do
>some THOROUGH testing to make sure though....
>
>
>
>
>=====
>Dave J. Andruczyk
>
>
>		
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