[CentOS] Trouble (?) reformatting flash drive to include former U3 partition

Sun Jun 14 20:52:19 UTC 2009
Robert Nichols <rnicholsNOSPAM at comcast.net>

Robert Nichols wrote:
> MHR wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 8:25 AM, Robert
>> Nichols<rnicholsNOSPAM at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> If you go into fdisk's "expert" mode and set the geometry to
>>> 31 heads, 31 sectors/track, 16319 cylinders you can utilize
>>> the full 8029470208 bytes.
>>>
>> I was able to do that.
>>
>> Then I went back and looked at my Kingston - it has 5 "heads," 32 s/t
>> and 99212 "cylinders."
>>
>> Now the question becomes, if I try that on the Sandisk, will it trash
>> the drive altogether, or would I still be able to use it, or would
>> that fail because there really isn't that much space on the "drive?"
> 
> The first thing I do with every USB flash drive I buy is figure
> out a geometry that uses all of the sectors reported by fdisk
> (I have a shell script that does that in a pretty much brute force
> way.) and then repartition and re-format the drive using that
> geometry.  I've never experienced any problem with that.

Re-reading your message, I think I misunderstood your question.
No, you won't be able to access more sectors than the total
capacity reported by fdisk.  You won't trash the device, but
making and using the filesystem will result in errors from
attempts to access beyond the end of the device.

-- 
Bob Nichols     "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
                 Do NOT delete it.