Broadsoft, Adtran, and Centos: Format and Mount USB Flash Drive in Centos 6.6

Format and Mount USB Flash Drive in Centos 6.6

I am using this solely for my Linux box to backup files. So in this case I am using etx4. If I was going to use this for Linux and PC I would have used another file system, like FAT32.

I am using the PNY 128GB USB 3.0 stick in this example.

If you don’t have the package “parted” installed already, please do so with:

# yum -y install parted

Plug USB stick in and identify what device it is.

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdf: 137.4 GB, 137438953472 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 16709 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000000

From the above output I can see my PNY 128GB USB stick as /dev/sdf. Now let’s clean this so we can get a fresh partition table on it and then format it. The dd command below should erase the 1MB of data on the stick, removing the partition information. **NOTE make sure you have the correct device or you will nuke the wrong drive.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdf bs=1M count=1

1+0 records in

1+0 records out

1048576 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.00843536 s, 124 MB/s

Now let’s put a partition on it with parted.

# parted /dev/sdf

GNU Parted 2.1

Using /dev/sdf

Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.

(parted)

Type p then press enter key to see what’s on there already.

(parted) p

Error: /dev/sdf: unrecognised disk label

(parted)

Perfect. Nothing there. Now use mklabel to label it.

(parted) mklabel gpt

(parted)

Now see whats on it.

(parted) p

Model: PNY USB 3.0 FD (scsi)

Disk /dev/sdf: 137GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags

(parted)

Sweet. We now have it labeled and can format it. First let’s get out of parted.

(parted) q

Now let’s format it with ext4 file system

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdf

mke2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)

/dev/sdf is entire device, not just one partition!

Proceed anyway? (y,n) y

Be patient. When finished the last few lines should like:

Writing inode tables: done

Creating journal (32768 blocks): done

Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 33 mounts or

180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

Now let’s get this mounted so we can us it. Lest make directory for the mount point first.

# mkdir /mnt/usb

Now mount it.

# mount -t ext4 /dev/sdf /mnt/usb

Make sure it’s there.

# df -h

/dev/sdf 126G 60M 120G 1% /mnt/usb

Now let’s add the mount to the fstab file for auto mounting, like on reboot.

# vi /etc/fstab

And add the following line to the bottom of the file.

/dev/sdf /mnt/usb ext4 defaults 0 0

Now let’s make sure this will load at boot, without rebooting.

# umount /mnt/usb

# df -h

We should not see our USB stick mounted anymore. Now check for auto mounting.

# mount -a

# df -h

/dev/sdf 126G 60M 120G 1% /mnt/usb

So got everything working now. Let’s check the speed of this new USB stick. I have renamed a windows 7 iso file to blob.iso and copied that to my /root directory on this server (server with the USB stick mounted now). /root is on a Samsung 128GB SSD connected to mother board SATA 3 controller. I have also copied this file to /myriad which is a zfs raidz2 pool with 4 WD RED 3TB drives in it connected to mother board SATA 3 controller. Will now copy this file from each of those locations, and then from the USB stick to each location, using rsync. This will allow us to get some real world speed test.

BTW: The copy of this file from /root to /myriad was:

# rsync -h --progress /root/blob.iso /myraid/blob.iso

blob.iso

3.32G 100% 263.30MB/s 0:00:12 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)

sent 3.32G bytes received 31 bytes 265.59M bytes/sec