[CentOS] Reformatting a USB drive

[Todd Cary]

Jim et al -

<< Very likely it created a directory named usbdisk in /media, and sync'd
the files there. If you plug something in with a label of 'usbdisk',
it'll get mounted there, and hide the existence of the files
underneath. >>
So, the question for me is how does Linux know if there is a USB drive 
so the info is transferred there or to create a "local directory" and 
put the data in it?  I would have expected an error message, "Hey, 
dummy.  The drive is not connected".

Todd

Jim Perrin wrote:
> On 5/24/07, Todd Cary <todd at aristesoftware.com> wrote:
>> Jim -
>>
>> Thank you!  That is exactly what I needed.  I had to make one change
>> though since I use rsync to copy the data to the USB drive: I could not
>> use vfat.  Instead, I used ext3.  With vfat, I got errors when it tried
>> to do a chmod (expected).
>
> Right, fat filesystems have no real concept of permissions.
>
>> I do have another fs question though.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed
>> that the USB icon was not on my desktop when I turned the drive on.  Not
>> knowing any better, I ran my rsync with the following:
>>
>> /usr/bin/rsync -av --exclude=".*" -e ssh /home/ /media/usbdisk/
>>
>> And it went ahead and did it's thing *but* the drive was
>> inoperable...dead.  Where did the data go?
>
> Very likely it created a directory named usbdisk in /media, and sync'd
> the files there. If you plug something in with a label of 'usbdisk',
> it'll get mounted there, and hide the existence of the files
> underneath. Provides an interesting 'low-tech' way to hide files
> occasionally. they're not WELL hidden, but hey...
>
>> I need a FS 101 course!!
> Will a 104 course work?
> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/l-dw-linux-lpic1104-i.html
> You might want to look at the LPI study material. About 50% is junk
> you'll never use and will mostly likely forget within 15 minutes, but
> some is the obscure fact material that will help save your geek ass
> one day :-P
>

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