My USB does not have a valid partition table.

sanjeevkafle · 11-07-2009, 09:56 PM

I am a very beginner in ubuntu.
I just bought a new 16GB USB drive yesterday.
I tried to make two partitions 8 GB each.
I used GParted on my Ubuntu 9.10.
My computer took a long time and restarted automatically.
When the computer restarted, it did not recognize the USB drive.
When I go back to Gparted, it shows 8 MB usb device Unallocated Space.

I did fdisk -l which shows the result as:

Disk /dev/sdc: 8 MB, 8388608 bytes
1 heads, 16 sectors/track, 1024 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16 * 512 = 8192 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xffdaffa0

Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table

Is there any way to fix these partition table.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks for looking in my thread.

Drakeo · 11-07-2009, 10:06 PM

open a terminal and type sudu cfdisk /dev/sdc now create the partitions you want.
then write to it. then go back now and use gparted to reformat to ext3 or leave them as ext2 good luck

fbsduser · 11-07-2009, 10:12 PM

try

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc

and lets see what results from it.
also use the "new disklabel" option in gparted if the other won´t work.

Drakeo · 11-07-2009, 10:22 PM

look the dd command is a very powerfull command not for a nooobeee . yes you can do that and you will have wipped the drive clean and left zero's. Please be kind.

sanjeevkafle · 11-08-2009, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drakeo

look the dd command is a very powerfull command not for a nooobeee . yes you can do that and you will have wipped the drive clean and left zero's. Please be kind.

Here is the output of the dd command.
My drive still shows only 7.83 mb.
what is 922mb copied on the below line.

sanjeev@sanjeev-laptop:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc
dd: writing to `/dev/sdc': No space left on device
1799881+0 records in
1799880+0 records out
921538560 bytes (922 MB) copied, 5.04461 s, 183 MB/s

sanjeevkafle · 11-08-2009, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drakeo

open a terminal and type sudu cfdisk /dev/sdc now create the partitions you want.
then write to it. then go back now and use gparted to reformat to ext3 or leave them as ext2 good luck

I tried:

sudo cfdisk /dev/sdc

Output:
FATAL ERROR: Cannot get disk size
Press any key to exit cfdisk

thorkelljarl · 11-08-2009, 04:48 PM

Was...

If this is a 16GB USB flash, it may have U3 installed on it. In some cases, U3 can cause problems in formatting the flash drive. It can only be removed with a special U3 utility run in Windows. Google. You might have to re-format the drive to vfat again before trying the U3 removal utility. Google.

sanjeevkafle · 11-09-2009, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thorkelljarl

Was...

If this is a 16GB USB flash, it may have U3 installed on it. In some cases, U3 can cause problems in formatting the flash drive. It can only be removed with a special U3 utility run in Windows. Google. You might have to re-format the drive to vfat again before trying the U3 removal utility. Google.

My USB did not have U3 system installed on it.
It did not have any important files either.
However, I wanted to make my USB work after that gparted error.
I dont hope much about making this USB work.

I have a question though, just for my knowledge, why does the USB shows 8 MB if the USB is corrupt. It should show nothing at all.

David the H. · 11-09-2009, 02:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drakeo

look the dd command is a very powerfull command not for a nooobeee . yes you can do that and you will have wipped the drive clean and left zero's. Please be kind.

I agree completely. Never just tell someone to "try this dd command" without some kind of warning about how dangerous it can be if used wrong. At the very least you should make sure to explain exactly what the dd command you're giving will do, and that it provides no safety checks or escape mechanisms, meaning that putting in the wrong drive name will probably mean destroying all the data on it.

This advice applies to any operation that can result in the destruction of data, of course.

Drakeo · 11-10-2009, 09:41 AM

ok then your flash has gone bad get them in here all the time. And yes flash drives go bad all the time why do you think they are so cheap. I have spent may hours rebuilding data on usb flash drives. And every one I get that will not format under linux. I try on a windows machine. if both fail then both fail. The drive has failed. Especially the bad ones with embeded viruses on them. Thank China and next time give use the manufactures name of the drive. so all of us can stay away from them.
anyway sorry.