FAT32 structure question

[Goi]

Hi
I have a flash drive that supports multiple LUNs, as well as having configurable LUN sizing. The LUNs are always FAT32 formatted. I am wondering if it is possible to directly write, in a sector level, the required data to format the individual LUNs rather than use MS's format feature. Would this data be dependent on the size of the LUN, or does it look the same regardless?

I hexedited a freshly wiped than formatted LUN, and it seems that only the first few sectors are written. Is it possible to copy these first few sectors, and write them to other LUNs and expect them to be correctly FAT32 formatted?

TIA.

 

[Nothinman]

It might work, but why would you even want to do such a thing?

I'm going to guess and say that it varies depending on the size of the device since the FAT is used to describe whether a cluster is used or not and the number of clusters is determined by how the big device is. But in addition to that when a FAT filesystem is formatted a serial number is generated for the filesystem and optionally a label, although only the former is supposed to be unique.

 

[Goi]

Let's say that I'm writing a program/script that goes through tons of these flash drives and formats them w/o user intervention, other than the plugging/unplugging of the drives, so the easiest way I can think of would be to write data in sector level physically to the individual LUNs to format them.

 

[Nothinman]

Or find a format utility that doesn't require any user input. Maybe there's a win32 port of mkdosfs if it's Windows you're doing this on.

 

[Goi]

I'm open to suggestions. Does anyone know of any? Preferably open source so I can integrate it into my utility instead of calling it as a separate app.

 

[Nothinman]

Funny you should ask that since I specifically mentioned mkdosfs in my last post and putting that into google returns a win32 port, with source, as the first hit.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Goi
Let's say that I'm writing a program/script that goes through tons of these flash drives and formats them w/o user intervention, other than the plugging/unplugging of the drives, so the easiest way I can think of would be to write data in sector level physically to the individual LUNs to format them.

format e: /q < yesfile.txt (put a y in the file)