[Solved] just had to create a new partition and then it lets me select FAT.
I’m not sure what happened, I remeber using gnome disks to do this before but it isn’t working now now the only options I get are (MBR/DOS) or (GPT) and neither one will let me access the actual USB afterwards in anything other than GNOME disks. I can’t use file explorer and add anything to it.
What is going on here? I swear this worked well before but now something has changed suddenly and I can’t get it to work anymore.
When I restore a Debian disk image to the USB it will finally show up in the file explorer but I can’t add anything to it and the only options I get to format it are those ones that won’t let me access it in the file explorer and actually use the USB.
What am I doing wrong?
GPT and MBR are partition systems, and FAT is a file system.
You first need to create the partition system in the drive or USB you want to use, so you can create partitions, and in those partitions you can create the filesystem. This way, you can have multiple partitions with different filesystems.
The file manager will only show the device if it has filesystems that it can open, I guess that is why it does not show you anything.
I think there is way to create a partitionless drive, but I think it’s better to just do it the usual way.
I recommend you to use GPT, by the way. Hope this helped.
I would stick with MBR for flash drives unless you need lots of partitions. GPT is great on PCs, but usually isn’t supported on other devices.