BH 1.7.8 USB Format, hdd size and wifi

A couple of unrelated questions for anyone who can answer.

I am currently running bh 1.7.8. I want to use a usb stick for picons/skins/epg and stuff like that. But when I format the stick using Usb format wizard in blue panel, extra settings, my solo will no longer restart/boot. It's stuck with black screen and red light whenever I try to restart it. If I unplug the usb stick and plug it back in after the box has started booting, it works fine. But it will not boot with the stick plugged in.

So. first question is: How do I format and mount the usb stick without the usb format wizard, and avoid not being able to boot? It does not show up in device manager. Also, should I create a swap file on the usb stick?

Second question is about hard drive. I have a 320 gb hard drive connected to usb. It is detected correctly, with correct size, but when its mounted, it only reports half of the capacity of free space. Is there something wrong with the partitions? Any way to clear the partitions and use the whole disk?

Third question is about wifi. I have a usb wifi adapter, and with bh 1.7.8 it works fine. But I tried upgrading to 1.7.9 and the wifi stopped working. I tried several other images, pbnigma, vix, and a few more, but the wifi would not work with them either. So I went back to bh 1.7.8, and it worked again. Anyone have an idea of why this could be?

I did'nt get to set mount points, because after formatting, the wizard restarts the box. That's when it just sits there with the red light on.

I changed the usb stick, and that seems to have done the trick. Strange, since I have been using the stick without problems until now. Thanks for the help!

I am trying to find out if the hard drive has hidden partitions, and clear them if there are any. I want to get it done without taking the hard drive out of the stb. I'm sure there are ways to do this over telnet. Just need to figure out how.

Available space when mounted to /media/hdd: 160 GB

Wish I knew more linux.