[PLUG] stick drive that mounts as /dev/sda (or sdb....)

[Edmond Rodriguez <erodrig_97@yahoo.com>]

Is there a reason why mounting a formatted usb stick drive with no partition table would be a bad practice?


During a meeting about two months ago, I mentioned I had a 4GB usb stick drive that I could only mount to /dev/sda (or b or c etc..).  I eventually learned I could mount it to /dev/sda (instead of sda1, or sda2 etc..)

The drive mounts fine and I tried putting some large files in it, which also worked fine. 

A comment was made at the meeting that the stick drive had no partition table, which was true.  Though fdisk shows me a partition table, the data looks random, and a warning is printed that the device probably has no partition table. 

Someone was also surprised I could successfully mount this drive to /dev/sda.  I have googled and seen a few sites discussing doing the same thing. 

All seems well.  but is there a reason this is NOT a good practice (using the drive with no partition table)?

Here is some log information and a "df" command below:

Aug 13 12:23:28 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: Manufacturer: USBest Technology
Aug 13 12:23:28 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 080501118ed735
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel: scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Ut165    USB2FlashStorage 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] 7897088 512-byte hardware sectors (4043 MB)
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] 7897088 512-byte hardware sectors (4043 MB)
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel:  sda:
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
Aug 13 12:23:33 localhost kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0


root@noname:/home/edmondrod# df -T /mnt/sda
Filesystem    Type   1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda      vfat     3940828         4   3940824   1% /mnt/sda
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