Formatting an 8GB usb stick as FAT16?

[Carol]

Hi all,
I have a big pile of routers that will not read anything except a FAT16 formatted USB drive. I also have a nice pile of 8GB thumb drives...a size too big to format to FAT16

Has anyone successfully done this? The Windows partition tool will not resize the drive.

I dont care about losing space on the drive, 1GB formatted in a way my router can read is more valuable to me than 8GB my router cannot read.

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[Carol]

I use Win7 and Fedora 16

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[Xue Sheng]

You might be better using an external USB DVD/CD Burner and if the files are really big go for a burner that can handle Dual Density DVDs

Had a similar problem with an XPSP3 PC it too thought it was FAT16 but in the case of the PC it was dead and all files were unrecoverable

 

[Carol]

The files are between 25 and 100 MB but only one is used at a time. We do have an external burner here but thats not practical to put in a field kit

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[Xue Sheng]

The files are between 25 and 100 MB but only one is used at a time. We do have an external burner here but thats not practical to put in a field kit

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

Practicle or not it may be the quickest and easiest fix but at FAT16 you may actually be looking at a ZIP Drive and good luck getting one of those (Cheaply) if you don't have one avaialbe

And although I have never done this, have you tried formating the stick via DOS (Command Prompt)

FORMAT [drive letter]: /FS:FAT16

 

[Bob Hubbard]

buy 256mb and 512mb sticks.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-format-a-usb-memory-stick-to-FAT/

Put the memory stick into your computer(duh!)

open command prompt ( start > all programs > accesories > command promt. or start > run > cmd)


type:
format x: /fs:FAT

PLEASE NOTE X IS WHERE YOU MEMORY STICK IS LOCATED WHERE THE X IS YOU SHOULD PUT THE LETTER OF YOU MEMORY STICK IN MY CASE E ; AND PLEASE DO NOT ACCIDENTLY FORMAT YOUR HARD DRIVE ITS NOT MY FAULT IF YOU FORMAT YOUR HARDDRIVE SO BE VERY VERY CAREFULL!!!!!!!

Win 7 may not do this. You may have to find an XP system.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Another option, Win 7 friendly.
http://superuser.com/questions/202160/how-do-i-format-my-8-gig-usb-drive-to-fat-fat16-in-windows-7

 

[granfire]

buy 256mb and 512mb sticks.

:lol:

WHERE?!!

I have not seen anything smaller than 4 gig I am thinking as of late!
:lfao:

 

[Bob Hubbard]

http://www.amazon.com/512MB-Pen-Dri...UTF8&qid=1361377495&sr=8-1&keywords=512mb+usb

 

[granfire]

of course...:lol:

 

[crushing]

I use Win7 and Fedora 16

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Check out GParted for Fedora. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
su -c "yum install gparted"

 

[Kurai]

Check out GParted for Fedora. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
su -c "yum install gparted"

Definitely the way to go!

 

[Xue Sheng]

We do have an external burner here but thats not practical to put in a field kit

I forgot to show you my field kit :EG:

and

 

[granfire]

you forgot

 

[jks9199]

Y'all are just too fancy!

Tactical field repair kit item 1:
View attachment $image_67111.jpg

If that fails, use item 2:


and return it to IT, labeled clearly as "BROKEN! Don't know what happened to it...."

 

[Xue Sheng]

Y'all are just too fancy!

Tactical field repair kit item 1:
View attachment 17702

If that fails, use item 2:
View attachment 17703

and return it to IT, labeled clearly as "BROKEN! Don't know what happened to it...."

No no no...you're talking about repairing something different...we're talking computers/servers... and don't try and tell me otherwise because back in my days as security for the state I had Tactical field repair kit item 1

Way back then there was also a Tactical field repair kit item 3 but seeing as this is Carol’s thread I am hesitant to show it

 

[Carol]

Ahhh Xue, now you know the REAL reason behind my broken Mag Lites

Had to keep my laptop running Windows all day for Visio stuff. So, I tried the Windows method (Thanks Bob!!) to shrink the drive down. It works like a charm......except my router cannot read it Tried playing around with allocation size, even took a 960MB flash and duplicated its numbers. Still doesn't work.

Cisco routers, especially the lower-end models are notorious for not reading floppy drives because Cisco wants you to buy their own outrageously priced USB drives.

I've installed gparted, I'll give that a try tomorrow. But its looking like I may indeed have to go out and buy a bunch of small USB drives. Seems like the smaller the USB, the greater the chance that it can be read.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Well, I just got toorand read my e-mail and today I highly recommed this tool for PC/Server work

 

[Carol]

http://www.amazon.com/512MB-Pen-Dri...UTF8&qid=1361377495&sr=8-1&keywords=512mb+usb

After a fair amount of sweating, and cursing, and fdisk'ing and dd'ing, this solution ended up being the winner! We bought a bunch of 128MB, 512MB, and 2GB flash drives, and whammo. Instant router fixit kit

Thanks Bob!