[IAEP] Anyone gotten a 4GB or greater USB stick to work for Sugar on a Stick?

[Caroline Meeks]

Ahh, this maybe where some of the confusing behavior we were seeing comes
from.  Let me repeat what I think I understand so I can see if I have it
right.

FAT is the same thing as FAT16
FAT is only an option for USB sticks 2 GB or less. You can only format a USB
stick larger then 2 GB as FAT32.
Some computers will not boot from a FAT32 formatted stick but some will.

Thus if you put SoaS onto a 4 GB USB it will fail on some computers and not
others.

A partition allows you to have one part of the USB formatted differently
then another part.

Thus a work around if you want to use a USB stick larger then 2GB would be
to create a smaller partition for the boot area and format that as FAT.

Let me know what I have right and wrong!

Thanks!!
Caroline

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff at gmail.com
> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Caroline Meeks
> <caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
> > trying to tease out what all the different failure mechanisms are
>
> One failure mode I know of:  Most USB sticks come pre-formatted from
> factory in a funny "FAT-16 LBA" partition mode and fs format. If you
> remove the partition and recreated it, most tools (and users!) will
> default to FAT-32 for new FAT partitions.
>
> And oftentimes BIOSes can't handle booting from FAT-32. I've spotted
> this on my (earlyish) EEE 701 and I think OFW also has (had?) this
> limitation.
>
> So if you have a non-booting disk, it's worthwhile asking fdisk about
> the partition mode, and check what the file utility says about the
> contents of the block device (in the partition).
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> martin
> --
>  martin.langhoff at gmail.com
>  martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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