[plug] Formatting a USB Flash Disk in Linux

[Craig Ringer]

Steve Grasso wrote:
> Hi Margo,
> 
> In this case, I suspect that XP has kindly formatted the device as FAT32, not 
> FAT, hence it is not a vfat (ie. FAT16) device.

vfat == fat32.
msdos == fat12/fat16

> mkfs -t vfat -v /dev/sda1

mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1

will also do the trick. '-F 16' makes an msdos format instead.

Please note that you appear to be working with it as a partioned device 
(going by the use of /dev/sda1) and WinXP may expect it to be 
unpartitioned ('/dev/sda' as a whole). This could be the source of your 
problem.

Craig Ringer