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

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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.

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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.