"bricked" gigabeat F10

[scharkalvin]

I had flash converted my gigabeat F10 (with a 32KB flash module) and it was working fine for months, when it suddenly died and comes up with 'system error' 30.  I had to do the battery switch thing to power it off, then I reconnected the usb cable and powered it up.  It comes up with the system error message, then gives the usb logo.  On my Linux box I can see /dev/sdc where the gigibeat should be, but I can't mount it (no sub-partitions) and fdisk just hangs (yes I did this as root) and won't report anything to "fdisk /dev/sdc".  Looks like either the gigibeat disk interface itself is fried, or the card is very badly scrambled.  I'll probably try removing the card and using an external usb card reader, also I'll try putting back the 10gb HD that came with the player. 
If the external card reader works with the flash I guess I'll have to reformat the card.  The question is how?
IE: which fat file system should I use (FAT16 or FAT32?)  That would be vfat under Linux I think.

[LambdaCalculus]

Format it as FAT32, and IIRC yes, that's vfat under Linux. (been a while though, having gone Mac and all, so not 100% certain!)

[GodEater]

vfat can be both FAT16 and FAT32 - be careful you choose the right one.

[bluebrother]

The command is mkfs.vfat, and make sure to use the option -F 32 as mkfs.vfat defaults to FAT16.