8 GB Flash drive formatted at 3.7 GB

[Marcel Rieux]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:40 PM, Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
>> If you remember well, I said I formatted the drive by right clicking
>> on the icon.  If you format sdb, an sdb1 partition will be created. If
>> you don't have a partition, the drive can't be used.
>>
> Whatever gave you that idea?

As I said, I right clicked on the drive, chose Format and now there's
an sdb1 partition and no other. I never created it otherwise.

> A file system is on a device, partitions are devices too. Try "ls -l
> /dev/sda*" and look at the first letter, all block devices.

You're right, my hasty extrapolations were wrong. But I don't believe
you can get a Flash drive working that will be listed only as /dev/sdb
any more than you can have a HD working with only /dev/sda. I have no
idea about arrays, I'm talking about standard desktops with one drive.

Or, so do I think, cause I've always created  / and /home partitions with Linux.