I formatted a USB drive in Ubuntu Linux and now it does not work with Windows 10

[OrangeX]

I was using an old 64gb USB drive for a Ubuntu Server deployment and formatted it on Ubuntu as ext4. I then reformatted it on Windows as FAT32 and used Rufus to make it into a Ubuntu Server install USB drive. After using it to install Ubuntu Server on a system, I tried formatting it on Windows 10. After waiting for about 30 Minutes (I tried to format as NTFS on GPT table), nothing happened and I had to go to bed. The next day I tried to format it on Ubuntu Server using parted. I did:

parted
(parted) select /dev/sdc
(parted) print
(parted) mklabel gpt
(parted) mkpart fat32 test 0 62.2G
(parted) print

Thanks for helping in advance!

[Windows7ge]

On Windows you can do:

diskpart
list disk
select disk #
clean
convert gpt
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
assign

And you should have your drive back.

[Bombastinator]

Windows only speaks ntfs, whil Linux will read and write a bunch of different formats... well ntfs, FAT and exFAT

[OrangeX]

On 3/2/2021 at 11:31 PM, Windows7ge said:

On Windows you can do:

diskpart
list disk
select disk #
clean
convert gpt
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
assign

And you should have your drive back.

After entering "create partition primary", this error comes up.

No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient
free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify
different size and offset values or don't specify either to create the
maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk
partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no
more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended
partition, (only logical drives may be created).

 

[OrangeX]

On 3/3/2021 at 12:06 AM, Bombastinator said:

Windows only speaks ntfs, whil Linux will read and write a bunch of different formats... well ntfs, FAT and exFAT

Windows also recognizes and can format drives to FAT32 and exFAT.

[Windows7ge]

3 hours ago, OrangeX said:

After entering "create partition primary", this error comes up.

What output do you get when you run the list disk command? If the disk doesn't report as the right capacity or if it was formatted to FAT or some other weirdness on Linux you might have to use a different utility to recover the drive.

 

This happened to me once. I had to use a formatting tool in DOS to recover the USB.

 

Did you try recovering it using the gparted GUI tool?

 

On 3/2/2021 at 6:06 PM, Bombastinator said:

Windows only speaks ntfs, whil Linux will read and write a bunch of different formats... well ntfs, FAT and exFAT

Windows will do NTFS, ExFAT, & FAT32. Certain optional features you can install may enable it to read EXT file systems and even NFS network shares.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

What output do you get when you run the list disk command? If the disk doesn't report as the right capacity or if it was formatted to FAT or some other weirdness on Linux you might have to use a different utility to recover the drive.

 

This happened to me once. I had to use a formatting tool in DOS to recover the USB.

 

Did you try recovering it using the gparted GUI tool?

 

Windows will do NTFS, ExFAT, & FAT32. Certain optional features you can install may enable it to read EXT file systems and even NFS network shares.

Won’t do ZFS though, or a whole bunch of other things, which was my point.   Neither FAT32 or exFAT are considered safe for long term use.  It’s an artificial constraint.  CDs had a file format that was more or less their own and windows read them fine.

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Won’t do ZFS though, or a whole bunch of other things, which was my point.   Neither FAT32 or exFAT are considered safe for long term use.

True, but it's just a thumb drive with nothing on it that we're trying to save not something important like financial records off a improperly formatted HDD.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

True, but it's just a thumb drive with nothing on it that we're trying to save not something important like financial records off a improperly formatted HDD.

The standard format of the original SD cards was FAT32.  It’s got some pretty hard size limits if you can stay within em.

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

The standard format of the original SD cards was FAT32.  It’s got some pretty hard size limits if you can stay within em.

I mean I'm not endorsing the use of FAT32.

 

If you need cross-platform compatibility (Windows/Linux/MacOS): Use FAT32 or ExFAT if you can.

If you only need it for a single platform: Use NTFS/ReFS, EXT3/4/ZFS, whatever MacOS has.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

I mean I'm not endorsing the use of FAT32.

 

If you need cross-platform compatibility (Windows/Linux/MacOS): Use FAT32 or ExFAT if you can.

If you only need it for a single platform: Use NTFS/ReFS, EXT3/4/ZFS, whatever MacOS has.

It’s not terrible for non-critical data.  It’s biggest problem is the size limit. 

[Windows7ge]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

It’s not terrible for non-critical data.  It’s biggest problem is the size limit. 

Files can't exceed 3.25GB IIRC. I hit that on a drive where I needed cross platform compatibility.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Files can't exceed 3.25GB IIRC. I hit that on a drive where I needed cross platform compatibility.

ExFAT is bigger.  It’s also not great for critical data or archiving though.

[Windows7ge]

14 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

ExFAT is bigger.  It’s also not great for critical data or archiving though.

ExFAT was FAT32's successor but it never really took off. Then NTFS came around and the rest is history.

 

But, again, if you're archiving important data on thumb-drives I think you have more to worry about than what File System you're using. :3

 

Anyway's I think we've skewed OP's topic enough. Let's wait for him to get back to us and go from there.

 

Edit: I'm mistaken NTFS came before ExFAT.

[Nayr438]

In Linux.

• fdisk -l
• cfdisk -z /path/of/device
  • example: cfdisk -z /dev/sdb
• label -> MBR
• New
• Enter
• Write
• y
• Enter
• Quit
• mkfs.fat -F32 /path/of/partition
  • example: mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdb1

 

In Windows

• Download Rufus
• Boot Selection -> Non Bootable
• Partition Scheme -> MBR
• File System -> Fat32
• Start

 

Restore Device defaults after Format in Windows, if Windows complains.

• File Manager
• Right click on the drive
• Format

 

[OrangeX]

I've tried everything and nothing works. On Windows, Rufus returns this error

and on Linux, every time I try to repair/format the drive, I just get a Input/Output error. Altough I don't like contributing to E-waste, it had to go because now I could not even format it to EXT4 anymore. Thanks for helping anyways

[Applefreak]

10 minutes ago, OrangeX said:

I've tried everything and nothing works. On Windows, Rufus returns this error

and on Linux, every time I try to repair/format the drive, I just get a Input/Output error. Altough I don't like contributing to E-waste, it had to go because now I could not even format it to EXT4 anymore. Thanks for helping anyways

Try Mini Tool partition Wizard on Windows if you don't want to use the console. You need to clear all partitions, then convert to mbr and set fat32 for the drive. You can later change it to whatever you like. The important thing is to clear all partitions on that drive first. GPT on thumb drives is hit and miss with windows and other devices while pretty stable in linux and mac os.

[Rhebucks]

Win 10 uses NT kernel
Linux is based on unix