OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: Dan Eicher on July 12, 2025, 01:08:51 pm

Title: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dan Eicher on July 12, 2025, 01:08:51 pm
I formatted a 8GB thumb drive as fat32, when I plug it in, I get detected.

But, when I go to inventory the disk is says empty, command line dir also shows no files.

How do I get it to work, as it should?
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Eugene Tucker on July 12, 2025, 01:19:00 pm
I suggest yo let the ARCANOAE utility setup the drive. It will use FAT16 for the paticians.
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Pete2 on July 12, 2025, 04:47:38 pm
Assuming this is a pre-formatted USB stick, it probably lacks LVM information. One solution is to get DFSee from Hobbes (if you don't already have it); start DFSEE (DFSOS2) from the Desktop menu; DfSee will display the drives on your system, uncluding (hopefully) the USB stick

 From the menu choose Edit/edit LVM info; choose your USB stick; in the pop-up window, assign * as the drive letter; click OK, then File/Exit. This, if I've got it right, usually works.
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dave Yeo on July 12, 2025, 05:19:00 pm
https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/usb/preparing-usb-msd-disks/ (https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/usb/preparing-usb-msd-disks/)
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dan Eicher on July 12, 2025, 06:25:35 pm
Will adding the LVM information cause Windows to be unhappy?

Is there an article or video that uncovers where the LVM information is stored and what it includes?

Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Roderick Klein on July 12, 2025, 06:40:36 pm
Its better to follow the steps in the instruction of AN to get your stick working.
Otherwise you will not get there.  Its not just adding the LVM information.

Roderick
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Martin Iturbide on July 12, 2025, 07:36:37 pm
Hi
Will adding the LVM information cause Windows to be unhappy?
I did it once with a FAT32 USB HDD and Windows did not complain.

Arca Noae's documentation is better but I have here my article with pictures using DFSEE:
- https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php?title=Prepare_the_FAT32_USB_Flash_Drive
This will wipe your USB HDD (or flash drive), please always keep a backup of your USB Flash drive.

Regards
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dave Yeo on July 12, 2025, 11:52:56 pm
Will adding the LVM information cause Windows to be unhappy?

Is there an article or video that uncovers where the LVM information is stored and what it includes?

It's fine, located in a hidden area of the MBR/EBR and nothing has ever complained about it, including cameras and old MP3 devices as well as Windows and Linux. Just don't use fdisk or similar on the disk after creating it on OS/2.
Note also that most sticks come from the factory formatted as large floppies (no partition table), which OS/2 only supports up to 2GB, so you do have to partition it on OS/2.
Worst thing is that our FAT32 driver is very slow.
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dan Eicher on July 14, 2025, 11:27:35 pm
Dave,
 I followed the docs and it works fine moving between Win11 and ArcaOS.

  A few notes:
    1) Booted with drive in.
    2) I first started miniLVM and it said the partition table was corrupt.
         Closed miniLVM.
    3) Used initdisk to erase and partition with mbr
    4) unplugged and replugged
    5) "notification area" (not sure what that's properly called in presentation manager, said drive unuseable.
    6) Shutdown, restarted.
    7) Green light on usb drive, was able to follow the rest of the directions in this document.

The document just says 'format the drive' - I would suggest, adding the example:
      format x: /fs:fat32
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dave Yeo on July 15, 2025, 01:18:43 am
Yes, the wiki does seem to need to be better about how to format. I'll pass on your suggestion. Another suggestion is using pmformat.
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dan Eicher on July 15, 2025, 02:34:14 am
Looking at my comment again, my recommendation to anyone would probably be, after using diskinit, reboot.

Maybe you shouldn't have to, but I think something somewhere wasn't getting cleared or refreshed.
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Eugene Gorbunoff on July 15, 2025, 03:21:34 am
Reformat utility -- https://en.os2.guru/projects/disktools/?action=reformat
Title: Re: Reading a usb thumb drive on arcaos 5.1.1
Post by: Dave Yeo on July 15, 2025, 03:45:38 am
Looking at my comment again, my recommendation to anyone would probably be, after using diskinit, reboot.

Maybe you shouldn't have to, but I think something somewhere wasn't getting cleared or refreshed.

You shouldn't have to as ejecting (or pulling if eject doesn't appear on the widget), waiting a few seconds and reinserting should be good enough.
Still, there's been times that a stick doesn't seem to work, then after a reboot it does.