[SOLVED] re-format a bootable usb drive

es7us · 03-03-2011, 05:17 PM

Hi all, I created a bootable usb stick using usb-creator. Everything went great, I was able to boot from it and install and everything. Problem is, I now want my usb stick back.

How can I wipe it?

When I plug the stick in, nothing happens (it doesn't mount). When the stick was empty, it auto-mounted beautifully. I ran

Code:

fdisk -l

and only see my hard drive listed, so thus I cannot manually mount it:

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x77e3ed41

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           5       40131   de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *           6        1461    11692032    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            1461        5108    29296875    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4            5109       26749   173827867+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5            5109        5473     2928640   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            5473        9120    29295898+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7            9121       26749   141601562+  83  Linux

I have done the pre-requisite Googling, without any luck.

OS: Ubuntu 10.10

tia.

es7us · 03-03-2011, 05:21 PM

Also, when I plug the stick in to a Windows machine it fires up. I could probably wipe it from there, but I don't want to be reliant on Windows, I want to be able to do this from a Linux box

es7us · 03-03-2011, 05:31 PM

weird, I unplugged it and plugged it back in a couple times and eventually it mounted as /dev/sdb. Magically solved.