I cannot erase USB flash-drive. Previously it was prepared & used as ubuntu-22 installation disk. Please help. Thanks
 

I cannot erase USB flash-drive. Previously it was prepared & used as ubuntu-22 installation disk. Please help. Thanks

Hello Igor. What have you tried already?

Use gparted to create a new partition table, a new partition and select the desired filesystem.

When flash disk ignores write requests and retains old data it is an indication that it has failed and is giving you the last chance to copy your files.

I have run into the same problem a time or two. I've been using wipefs lately to get rid of the filesystem signatures before I do anything else, especially if I installed from the memory stick.

I'm going to have to try gparted next time. Sounds like a solid suggestion.

I've seen that too.

There are two possibilities. It might be failing but it may just be that its iso formating makes it look like an external optical drive and what could alter that?

Mount it, note the id (e.g. /dev/sdc or whatever), unmount, and use this
Then format it with gparted.

I tried several ways posted on Internet, in particular, using g-parted. Failed.

Terminal printed: Permission denied

If you are trying to use dd as posted above then you need to use sudo

sudo dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=10 of=/dev/sdx

Please verify the correct device ID.

#2
PurpleSquirrel

I tried g-parted

and

https://www.techrepublic.com/article...owing-it-away/

DavidMcCann

I -- not a pro -- tried that way. Failed.

michaelk

Thank you. Especially for the last quotation.

Regretfully, it cannot help to purge my flash-jack.

When a pendrive has been used as an installation image, to return it to normal usage, you need to write a new partition table to it, usually an MBR, (could be a GPT, depending on size), then partition, & add a file system.

michaelk

Terminal answered:
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
10485760 bytes (10 MB, 10 MiB) copied, 0.0065166 s, 1.6 GB/s

So?

fatmac

When a pendrive has been used as an installation image, to return it to normal usage, you need to write a new partition table to it, usually an MBR*, (could be a GPT*, depending on size), then partition, & add a file system.

* Sorry, but what's that?

Now with gparted
1. Create a new partition table. MBR for a flash drive is fine
2. Create a new partition, select the desired filesystem. If also using the drive with Windows select NTFS, exFAT or FAT32.
3. Click the green check mark to apply all operations.

MBR = Master Boot Record. It organizes partitions on a drive so the system can find them.
GPT = GUID Partition Table. Basically same as for MBR but for drives > 2TB

DavidMcCann

Mount it, note the id (e.g. /dev/sdc or whatever), unmount, ...


It doesn't mount.

If you created a new partition table as instructed above, did you create a partition with a filesystem (see post 17)? If not, it won't mount as there is nothing to mount. You need to create a filesystem on it.

I thank you all for your answers to my post.

I think fatmac is on to something:

If you write a DVD image to the flash drive, it gets a ISO9660 file system signature written to it. And ISO9660 is read-only.

I have been using wipefs a lot lately to make good-but-unwriteable USB flash drives writeable again. The command line is "wipefs -a /dev/sdX". It zeroes out the file system signature and a couple of other locations, as described in the man page.

It has failed me on a couple of cheap drives. They got the hammer-and-trash treatment.

If you can still read the data from the last time you used the drive, give wipefs a try.

HTH

The reason for telling you to mount it was to see where your computer mounts any usb stick. You don't want to dd zeros all over a hard drive! You could mount a usb stick, see where that goes, unmount it and replace with the one you are trying to repair. But if it doesn't actually mount, then it may well be dead.