Fake hard drive sectors?

[linux83]

I have a 32 GB usb flash drive that mounts as vfat with a lot of unknowns.

fdisk lists the partitions as:
sda1 = midnightbsd boot
sda2 = midnightbsd vinum
sda3 = ceph journal partition

sda2 has the C/H/S reversed?

I was able to recreate "fake" sectors by doing this:

1. create gpt partition table
2. create nested dos partition table
3. set sector alignment to 1
4. create gpt partition on the nested dos partition table (whole disk)
5. create partition on the gpt partition table, starting at less than sector 2048 (for example 48)
6. set sector alignment back to 2048

This will show free space starting at 2000 and ending at 48, with a lot of storage.
I have tried to dd to a .img file, but it stops with an error that the file is to large, this happens at about 4.3GB. I have plenty of free space, maybe the sectors are messing with the kernel?

Any ideas whats going on?

 

[KGIII]

Hmm... What's the maximum file size for that disk format?

That's just a thought...

 

[APTI]

this is simple if you looked it up. vfat file size limit is 4G so that means you can't create a file larger than 4G on it. That is the error. You need a different format to the flash drive that supports the size you need

 

[bob466]

Welcome to the Forum.

Can't you format it to something else. ?

 

[wizardfromoz]

Format it to ExFAT.

Supported file size : 16 Exabytes

Supported volume size : 128 Petabytes

Cheers

Wizard

 

[linux83]

Thanks for the help, reformatting fixed my problem of creating a backup img of the device.

Sorry, I wasn't clear earlier, I want to mount the bsd partitions, but it will only mount the whole device (/dev/sdb) using the vfat file system. There doesn't seem to be a partition with vfat, is it possible to apply the file system to the partition table?

I thought the sectors might have something to do with it, the partitions are showing more sectors and storage than the device actually has.

 

[APTI]

Thanks for the help, reformatting fixed my problem of creating a backup img of the device.

Sorry, I wasn't clear earlier, I want to mount the bsd partitions, but it will only mount the whole device (/dev/sdb) using the vfat file system. There doesn't seem to be a partition with vfat, is it possible to apply the file system to the partition table?

I thought the sectors might have something to do with it, the partitions are showing more sectors and storage than the device actually has.

vfat is going to be nothing but problems especially when you want such large files. Abandon vfat like so many others have.