Just wondering if it’s possible for a USB to be formatted to use the UDF file system or if not, then is it possible for a USB to do something like emulate the UDF file system format?
If you are on linux you can install the udftools and do it through GParted.
Or use dd. The first one will erase the partition table, the second writes the filesystem. Just replace the “f” in /dev/sdf with whatever the drive letter is. I would use GParted though.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdf bs=1M count=1
mkudffs -b 512 --media-type=hd /dev/sdf
Could you show a screenshot of the result for proof? I just find it hard to believe it would work for a USB. The file system is strictly meant for discs. I mean, the dd commands are quite powerful, but this is something I would need to see the results for.
the filesystem was made for disks but it is just a file system. there is nothing special about it besides the fact that there is no write enable flag. You can throw the filesystem onto anything that you can put any other filesystem on
You probably wouldn’t want to go over 65-70GB though. Also probably best to do it through GParted. Needs a new Partition Table or it will bee seen as fat32 by BIOS.
Thank you for those, but I was looking for the result in which the file system is being detected by the OS from the USB specifically.
edit: nvm I see it now under the file system tab. (my mistake, it was hiding)
Could you show proof of it working or being detected in Windows? I know when things copy over, they don’t always go well.
I don’t have windows installed.
hmm, I can make my adata go back to normal but the PNY thumb drive seems to want to be stuck as a UDF…
If it works on linux it will work on windows they are both up to the same spec.
Really? Interesting…
Have you tried some powerful command line based commands to get it back to normal? I don’t really know Linux ones, but I know some Windows ones. On the Mac side of things and the Linux side of things I’m pretty sure there’s GUIs that make it pretty easy. I know Fedora has a nice “Disks” app/program that works well for me.
And if that doesn’t work, I know creating a Windows installer and then booting into it and then trying to format it using Command prompt might work. But knowing how well Linux does at getting under the hood, I would assume Linux would work best for this.
So far force mounting it read write and zeroing it hasn’t worked. Got to get more creative…
try dding zeroes to the first few megs of the block device (not the partition) like this:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=10
Yeah, tried that. Putting a new partition table on it and formatting it ends with it reverting to UDF when I mount it again.

