For USB pen drives to work with the PS2, for example to transfer saves with u/wLaunchELF, they have to be formatted as Fat32.
I'm using an 8GB Cruzer Blade, and it's working fine. Have seen people saay you shouldn't use one over 2GB, but maybe that info's out of date.
To format in Linux:
lsblk
to list. Note where your drive is (See §lsblk Example, where it's 'sdg'. Where I write [drive]
later, replace with your equivilant of 'sdg')sudo umount /dev/[drive]
sudo parted /dev/[drive] --script -- mklabel msdos
sudo parted /dev/[drive] --script -- mkpart primary fat32 1MiB 100%
sudo mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/[drive]1
sudo parted /dev/sdb --script print
. Make sure there's info in all the columns.... sdg 8:96 1 7.5G 0 disk └─sdg1 8:97 1 7.5G 0 part [address] ...