Formatting USB drive for Linux - help

[pritchard9]

Hi guys.

Im having problems installing a Puppy Linux variant (PupFluxLite) to my USB thumbdrive.

See, I was hoping to:

Use Gparted on the PupFluxLite LiveCD to partition my thumbdrive - 1 ext2 partition, and 1 Fat 32.

Tell the Puppy installer to install to the ext2 partition.

Be able to boot to pupFluxLite, but still be able to use the Fat32 partition on all the windows machines i use.

But its really not working. When i make the two partitions, my PC wont boot to PupFlux ("Operating System Missing"), and Windows Vista only recognises the ext2 partition, and tells me to format it.

And now ive just tried to make only 1 FAT partition, but its not having any of it.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance. Great forums - dead friendly :)

[moonlit]

Windows only sees the first partition on a thumbdrive. The easiest way to accomplish this is to just format the whole stick to FAT and install Linux on it, that way Linux will still boot and Windows will still be able to use it for files.

[pritchard9]

Ohright Moonlit, cheers.

Think i'll do that actually. That had come to mind earlier, but i wanted to be a smart-arse. Failed horribly though :P.

Do you recommend FAT16, or 32?

Thanks

[moonlit]

FAT32 should work just fine, if it doesn't (and you're sure the stick is bootable) then try FAT16.

[pritchard9]

Ah FAT32 did the trick. Cheers moonlit. :)