Questions[fat32](ubuntu)

I'm using Ubuntu 17.10.

I formatted an USB pen-drive to NTFS to prepare a Windows7 USB Installer.

I set the bootable flag on this pen-drive and copied the files into it.

EDIT 1: The USB pen-drive is automatically mounted by udev.

umount /dev/sdb1 takes from 10 upto 12 minutes to complete.

Here are the mount options :

$ mount | grep sdb
/dev/sdb1 on /media/mansfeld/Win7_USB_Installer type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096,uhelper=udisks2)

EDIT 2: The cp operation is not INSTANTANEOUS at all, it took 3 minutes to copy the files to the USB pen-drive.

EDIT 3: The sync operation (done right after the cp) took 12 minutes to complete ! But then the umount will be instantaneous.

For FAT32, (with sync also disabled during mount), I notice the same behaviour.

Any ideas why it takes so long to unmount NTFS USB pendrive ?

I have Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).

I've noticed recently every file on my hard drive gets the executable privilege, even every text files, so when I open it a pop-up window asks me what to do (run in terminal-Display-Cancel-Run).

I tried to change permissions in the terminal as sudo chmod a-x -Rv /media/D/*. It shows me that privileges have been changed to 666 which means rw-rw-rw, but actually nothing has been done; it's still as executable privilege given.

I tried to move some files to the desktop. Then did as above, and it was successful.

My hard drive is formatted as "FAT32". What would be the problem?

I have music that I play in my car, from an FAT32 USB stick. The folder which I use to put songs on is stored on my EXT4 hard drive. I add/remove/retag songs regularly and occasionally want to rsync the changes to the USB stick. But for some unknown reason (maybe permissions?), rsync copies all the files every time rather than just changed ones. I am calling rsync like:

rsync -vrlptgD source dest

How can I make it work like I want it to (i. e. know when a file hasn't been changed and don't copy it)?

Is there a way to convert a FAT partition to ext3 (or other ext..) while keeping the data on it? I don't have access to a external USB hard disk to temporarily store the data, so I'd like to just convert it while the data sits on the partition. Is that possible?

I would like to backup my mail directory on a USB key. However, my IMAP has a strange naming convention that something include a colon (:) character. Since the USB is in a window format, rsync fail to create those file. Is there a way to replace the colon character by an underscore when running rsync? (Or to do the same synchronization with another tool?)

Just a few point that I clarified in the comments :

• This is a worst case scenario backup, I would like to be able to read it on a windows machine without installing anything.
• I got a lot of data that stay constant. So I save a lot of time if I have a tool that just copy the newer files.
• I am not looking for a rewrite of rsync. I am looking for a existing tool that can be used out of the box.

Thanks