On Mon, 16 Jan 2012, Richard Ash wrote: > On Sun, 2012-01-15 at 18:32 +0100, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote: > > >>>> By the way, what happens if you try to repartition the 32-GB card using > > >>>> this reader under a different OS? > > >>> > > >>> I'm not able to repartition it under Windows, in the USB card reader, > > >>> and in the built-in card reader. > > > > > > Why not? Doesn't that prove there's something else wrong, somewhere? > > > > Probably my poor Windows skills, as the built-in Windows partitioner > > doesn't want to repartition any card, even in the built-in card reader ;) > > It's an intentional cripple-ware feature of the Windows disk manager - > it believes that removable media shouldn't be partitioned, so refuses to > allow you to do so, or even to delete or remove partitions from them. > > So even if everything is working normally, you won't be able to > re-partition the card with the supplied Windows tools. > > (I found this out when an old digital camera partitioned the first 8GB > of a 16GB CF card, and all the new ones refused to make it any bigger, > even for a full format. Windows would show you the problem, but not let > you fix it, so I had to use Linux to wipe the card and be able to format > the full 16GB. Has worked fine ever since.) Wonderful. Is this a new feature in Windows? ISTR that under XP or some earlier version there was no such restriction. All right, at least we can assume that if Windows _did_ allow the 32-GB card to be repartitioned, it would set up the partitions as though the card's total capacity were 2 TB. That's the behavior people have seen with other devices in the past. Tomasz, did you try the experiment of renaming /lib/udev/ata_id temporarily before plugging in the reader? (Or maybe the program at fault is /lib/udev/udisks-part-id; I don't remember.) If that works, you ought to be able to overwrite the card's partition table under Linux. It would be interesting to see what Windows then thinks about the card. Alan Stern -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-usb" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
