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I recently flashed my SD card to format and reinstall Linux Mint on my machine. Everything went well, but I have learned that SD cards cannot be use as a boot device.

The problem now is that I am trying to format the SD Card to use again as storage device in my camera, following this tutorial.

I want to format to FAT32 in order to use it every system, according to the instructions.

When I run the command sudo parted /dev/sdc --script -- mklabel msdos I get the following:

Error: Partition(s) on /dev/sdc are being used.

I checked permissions using ls -l /dev/sdc and got:

brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 Feb 14 03:25 /dev/sdc

Changed permissions with chmod 777 /dev/sdc and remade the first step, and cannot access the SD card to clean it.

I don't know what the "b" means as a permission... is it related to bootable?

I just installed Linux Mint Mate 20.1 and when I insert the SD Card it keeps showing the drive name as Linux Mint MATE 20.1 64-bit Any help would be great.

antonioferrinho
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  • Installers often create hybrid DVD/flash drive which does not have standard partitions. You need to erase beginning of drive, so it can be partitioned. Reset USB flash that was dd'd to make it usable again, reuse https://askubuntu.com/questions/939230/formatting-a-usb-stick-unable-to-operate-usb/939266#939266 & https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb#Re-use_the_pendrive & https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/216152/usb-disk-read-only-cannot-format-turn-off-write-protection – oldfred Feb 14 '21 at 04:02
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    You must umount all the partitions of a "disk" before you can alter the structure of the disk by formatting. – waltinator Feb 14 '21 at 05:00
  • Some machines can boot from SD card (but I think not many PCs). – ctrl-alt-delor Feb 14 '21 at 10:00
  • Thank you all for your replies. Nicola answer did the job. – antonioferrinho Feb 14 '21 at 15:09

1 Answers1

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The "b" in the output from ls means it's a block device (also check this answer, not a normal file. If the volume shows up when you insert it, it means it is automounted. You can see it with df | grep sdc or mount | grep sdc. You need to unmount it (possibly as root) before being able to mangle with it. Try

umount /dev/sdc1

or

sudo umount /dev/sdc1

(sdc1 depends on what df or mount show)

Nicola
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  • findmnt is better than mount at listing mount-points. – ctrl-alt-delor Feb 14 '21 at 09:58
  • Thanks a lot Nicola! I used df | grep sdc and followed the sudo umont /dev/sdc accordingly, after that followed the tutorial I mentioned and everything worked fine. For the record, when I inserted the SD Card back into my Nikon D3200 it was not able to identify it. I update the date and time on Camera Menu and everything worked just fine. Thanks a lot once again. – antonioferrinho Feb 14 '21 at 15:07