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05-27-2020, 02:43 PM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Feb 2015
Distribution: Ubuntu 20.04 lts
Posts: 598
Rep: 
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Need help formatting a USB drive
I'm using Ubuntu 19.10 and the application called "Disks" to attempt to format a USB thumb drive.
I have attached a screenshot of the error I get when I attempt to format this usb thumb drive.
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05-27-2020, 04:21 PM
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#2
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Member
Registered: Dec 2004
Location: Ball of Confusion
Distribution: Artix,Arch,Slackware,Bluewhite64
Posts: 261
Rep:
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Try fdisk /dev/sdb. Then mkfs /dev/sdb1. You can also search the web 'fdisk mkfs format tutorial' should find something.
Or are you trying to install linux with a USB drive? And you're trying to put the iso on the USB drive?
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05-27-2020, 04:48 PM
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#3
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Moderator
Registered: Aug 2002
Posts: 26,809
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It looks like you created a bootable USB from an ISO file.
If so you should delete the MBR, create a new partition and then format it.
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05-28-2020, 10:36 AM
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#4
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Jul 2006
Location: London
Distribution: PCLinuxOS, Salix
Posts: 6,252
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If it's a Linux boot disk, then the computer won't see it as a sort of hard disk but as a sort of CD! To convert it back into a normal storage medium
- plug it in and then unmount it
- run the command
Code:
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=10 of=/dev/sdb
- format in the usual way.
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05-28-2020, 12:02 PM
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#5
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Member
Registered: Apr 2019
Distribution: Linux Mint
Posts: 61
Rep:
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If you are looking for a GUI way to format a USB, you can try mintstick or usb-creator-kde
sudo apt install mintstick
or
sudo apt install usb-creator-kde
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05-28-2020, 02:53 PM
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#6
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Member
Registered: Sep 2015
Distribution: MX Linux 21.3 Xfce
Posts: 597
Rep: 
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Use Gparted.
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05-29-2020, 09:33 AM
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#7
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Jul 2006
Location: London
Distribution: PCLinuxOS, Salix
Posts: 6,252
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If it's been turned into an installer with an ISO 9660 image, then Gparted may not accept it. The dd command I gave removes the identifying part of the image so that Gparted will consider it as an unformated device.
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06-02-2020, 02:16 PM
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#8
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Member
Registered: Oct 2016
Distribution: Looking again
Posts: 429
Rep:
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In "Disks" next to the Mount button there are other Options - there's a choice to "Edit partition"
That should tell you what's up.
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06-03-2020, 06:42 AM
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#9
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Member
Registered: Apr 2018
Location: Delden, NL
Distribution: Ubuntu
Posts: 261
Rep: 
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Can't he just remove both existing partitions with the minus sign button and then create a new partition and format it?
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06-03-2020, 03:33 PM
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#10
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Member
Registered: Mar 2008
Location: New York
Distribution: Debian
Posts: 809
Rep:
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I use Gparted to remove and reformat my bootable linux USB drives.
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