Re: mistakes ext2 with fat16

[Andrew Clausen]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2005 at 11:02:45AM +0100, A Mennucc wrote:
> But if I try to use parted on it, I get this 
> # parted /dev/sda
> GNU Parted 1.6.21 with HFS shrink patch 16
> .....
> Using /dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target0/lun0/disc
> (parted) print                                                            
> Disk geometry for /dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target0/lun0/disc: 0.000-124.750 
> megabytes
> Disk label type: loop
> Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Flags
> 1          0.000    124.750  fat16       

Notice that Parted says: "Disk label type: loop".  This means it did not
detect a partition table.  Or rather, the partition table looked very
much like a FAT file system.  Unfortunately, the two are rather hard to
tell apart.  In fact, they coexist on the same disk space, and are
therefore impossible to tell apart in some circumstances.

In your case, I suspect the memory stick contained a FAT file system
that was replaced with a partition table, but the FAT file system
wasn't destroyed beyond recognition.  Hence Parted got confused.

Could you please send me the first 10k of your memory stick, so
I can see where Parted got confused?

        dd if=/dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target0/lun0/disc of=usb-fat-confuse
        bs=10k count=1

Thanks,
Andrew