first post: I have fiddled around with usb flash drives and sometimes it worked using several ways of getting a functional live usb drive. Persistence is not really the main objective for me. However, I, somehow(gparted) created TWO partitions on a Lexar 64G drive thinking i would be able to use the 64G optimally. ie. store data. Now, I have the flash drive with two partitions, on one of them a live distro, the other one i cannot write anything on it!
I simply created two partitions first. then used MULTIBOOT to get a distro on the first partition. It boots BUT, I know the storing data part as written above does not function! So, I want to clean the drive and try something else.
I have tried several ways of deleting the partitions, formatting etc, without the desired outcome; a clean flash drive. even when formatting the drive on a Windows machine does not work. eventhough it says the drive has been formatted. (only the partition with the distro on it!)
next boot; Distro still present.

How is that for persistence!?
sos
help
etc

grtz

You could give the following a shot

Ensure that /dev/sdb is your USB stick (it may be e.g. /dev/sdc), and that the partitions on it are unmounted. *All data on the stick will be erased*

You could probably get by with just erasing the partition info at the start of the USB stick. However the above is more certain to do the job, although it does take more time.

When you boot the system on the flash drive and as root run: fdisk -l do you see the second partition?
If you do, can you create a mount point for it and mount the partition and then copy anything to it?
I expect that if you can, you would have to go through this process each time you boot.
I can't think of any reason why you could not use something like GParted to delete or format those partitions. Have you tried creating a new partition table for the flash drive? If you do that, make sure you have the correct drive!

With a flash/pendrive seen as a 'removable device' in windows, windows only see the first partition which explains that result. With an actual usb hard drive you can create and use multiple partitions on windows. You might be able to use some third party software discussed at the windows 10 forums in the link below or change it so it does not show as removable.

https://www.tenforums.com/drivers-ha...ash-drive.html

A new partition table seems like the simplest solution if you just want to clean the drive.

gpt?

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1858...m-a-thumbdrive

As above, be sure you know what you are doing with dd command.