On Sun, 2023-09-24 at 15:44 -0400, Jonathan Billings wrote:
Perhaps someone created a partition table on the device, but then wrote a FAT32 filesystem to the raw device, and the bits on the only filesystem look close enough like filesystem entries to confuse tools?
If someone uses more than one partition tool on a drive, you can end up with conflicting results.
Some tools set info in the boot section, and a back-up somewhere else. Some tools handle just the boot section. Some tools get confused when the boot section and back-up don't agree with each other. Others don't give a damn, and ignore the secondary info. Never mind the tools which have different ideas about doing the same things.
Same goes with formatting. I wouldn't externally format a drive using different tools and expect it to be problem free.
As a wacky example, I renamed a SD card on a Mac (which changes some parameters at the start of the SD card, but shouldn't do anything else). When I put that SD card into a recorder, it had to reformat the card. Fortunately this was a blank card that I was doing an experiment on.