thanks for the 'di' info!
I git everything taken care of after I figured out the name of that disk
manager program; gparted.

:-)~MIKE~(-:

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:57 AM, Rusty Ramser <rusty_ramser@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi, Mike.
>
>
>
> mkfs just *m*a*k*es a *f*ile *s*ystem, it doesn’t do the partitioning for
> you.  For that, you’ll probably just want to use fdisk.  You’ll need to
> figure out which device your 8 GB card is, but it’s usually not too hard.
> If you’ve got one hard disk (likely /dev/sda) and no other external
> drives/devices added, when you insert the card it will probably be /dev/sdb.
>
>
>
> Try doing something like this:  sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb
>
> That’s a lower case “L”, for list.  Not a number one.  The command just
> displays information and then immediately exits out to your shell prompt.
>
>
>
> Does it report back drive partitioning information that looks like your 8
> GB card?  That’s probably it then.  Does it report back 500 GB that looks
> like your external USB drive you have attached?  Wrong device, obviously.
> Try looking at /dev/sdc and so on, until you find your card.
> Alternatively, you can just issue the command without specifying any device
> at all (sudo fdisk -l) and it will spit out a long listing of all your
> drives and partitions; it might be easier to spot the 8 GB card that way.
>
>
>
> Once you’ve nailed down which device your card is, you can even be extra
> safe by removing the card and then running the fdisk command again.  Does
> it error out because it can’t find your device?  That’s good, because it
> shows you’ve removed the right device.  Insert the card again and run the
> fdisk listing command to make sure it’s still the same device.
>
>
>
> Once you know what device you’re dealing with, just run fdisk
> interactively (sudo fdisk /dev/sdb, for example) to delete the existing
> partitions and create one big new one.  Then use mkfs to create your file
> system on the card, and you’re ready to go.
>
>
>
> Bonus Only-Partially-Related-To-Anything Tip:  Do you have the di utility
> installed on your system?  It stands for Disk Information, and I find it
> provides much more usable information than df or du.  I would typically
> use di first to see a listing of drive devices/partitions I had available.
>
>
>
> Cheers.
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> *From:* plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org [mailto:
> plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org] *On Behalf Of *Michael Havens
> *Sent:* Saturday, April 4, 2015 09:41
> *To:* PLUG
> *Subject:* Re: I have an 8GB card....
>
>
>
> I found the command. I used df but this is what happened after I tried to
> format it:
>
>
>
>  $ sudo mkfs /dev/sdc
>
> mke2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
>
> /dev/sdc is entire device, not just one partition!
>
> Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
>
> mkfs.ext2: No medium found while trying to determine filesystem size
>
>
>
> What is wrong?
>
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> *From:* plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org [mailto:
> plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org] *On Behalf Of *Michael Havens
> *Sent:* Saturday, April 4, 2015 09:24
> *To:* PLUG
> *Subject:* I have an 8GB card....
>
>
>
> I want to use this card. Currently it is partitioned. Can I delete all of
> the partitions by formatting it with mkfs? I would have just tried it
> without asking but I can't remember what the command is to see what number
> the device has been assigned (/dev/sd??) so I need help with that as well.
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
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