[SOLVED] Trouble with new USB

[Alex]

Have seen posts like this before and only thing that ended up working was to zero out USB with dd first, then reformat.  Might as well give it a shot.

Plug USB in and make sure you know which device name is assigned to it.  If sudo blkid doesn't show it, open GParted and find out the name from there.  (Then close GParted.)  For this example I'll use "/dev/sdb" for name of USB.  If that's not correct for you, change it in command below.

To write zeros to whole USB, open a terminal and enter this command:

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=4k conv=notrunc

Wait until it completes (could take many minutes), then unplug drive.

Plug drive back in, open GParted -- create new "msdos" partition table, then make partition(s) you want on it.

Hopefully that works.

As this was the only suggestion yet untried, I followed it to the letter (almost, it did not let me unless I used sudo first) ...then nothing happened except for as the screenshot shows for almost 1/2 hour (just about the longest i can manage to stare at a screen without anything happening lol) Here is a screen shot:



And Yes I did enter the password and pressed 'enter' ...

The fun started when I replugged in the USB stick - everything froze solid and drastic re-start was necessary. Now i hesitate to re-plug in the evil USB stick (it must be cursed!) and lament the loss of $16 and move forward...with my life. A formal burning at the stake of the bewitched USB is scheduled for early afternoon. RIP

[gold_finger]

Alex,

Sorry -- forgot the "sudo".  Duh!  (I'll go back and edit last post to correct it.)

Also forgot to warn you that "dd" will not display any kind of feedback until it's done.  I haven't used it to wipe a USB in a while, so was just guessing at amount of time it would take.

Am running a test for myself on an old, crappy, dead 2GB USB stick to see how long it takes.  Will report back with results.

P.s.  You may want to hold off throwing it away until I post back -- good chance it just had not completed yet.  Not sure why it froze the computer though.

[Valtam]

Pulling out any storage media is a no-no when it is zeroing out. Typically a zero out will take anywhere from an hour to several hours. Best to start this before you go to bed, then check it in the morning. But chances are that the drive is now kaput due to pulling it out mid-job. This will be also why your system froze. As gold_finger said, don't throw it out just yet, it would be a terrible waste of the support people have offered up to this point.

[gold_finger]

Sorry for delay -- had to run test twice.  After first run, got some errors and had to force stop of dd process.  Realized that I had mistakenly used lowercase "k" in "bs-k".  It should have been uppercase "K".  Corrected my prior post with that and just ran a second test without errors this time.

My 2GB USB took a little over 8 minutes to zero out.  Just from that test, I'd say your 16GB USB will take a little over an hour.  Your computer CPU will make a difference too -- it may be slower or faster than mine, so these numbers are just a rough estimate.  Just so you have something to go by, the computer I ran this on is running an AMD Phenom II Quad-Core 3.2GHz processor.

My dead USB stick was then able to be reformatted in GParted.  (It threw out error messages and couldn't be mounted before.)  So, it appears to be working again ... for now at least.  So, I'd say give it another shot on yours and just wait until it completes knowing that it will take quite a bit longer than we both initially thought it would.

[Alex]

As Jerry mentioned it would be a pity to waste all the good advice I have received up to now so I will repeat the process and see what happens...will report back. Meanwhile a sincere thank you to all of you who are so willing to offer help - it's one of the main things that makes this distro one of the best...soon to be the best

[Alex]

Well that looked much better - the USB flashed its weak LED at me, for the first time since I broke it. It too 16 minutes, I feel positive about it. Now to Gparted...

[Alex]

Used Gparted:



I'm not sure what to do with the unlocated part...

Tried to mount it, and...got the same message (as above)  again:

[Alex]

I also tried "sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb" and this is what I get, it means nothing to me lol



Thought it might help...

[bobw]

This doesn't help with your problem, Alex, but it may be of interest to other people who want to "zero out" a storage device.  Apparently, the process can also be achieved using Gnome-disk-utiliity (aka Disks), with the advantage that you are using a GUI rather than a terminal and it tells you what it is doing and reports % progress.  You select ""Overwrite existing data with zeros (slow)" in the Erase box when formatting the device.


On my quite low-end system it took 21 seconds to do a 1G test partition on the hard drive (compared to about 1 second for a standard reformat).

[gold_finger]

Alex,

Just to be sure I know exactly what has happened, are you saying that you re-ran dd command (with fixed "bs=4K") and it only took 16 minutes?

Your fdisk -l output is not showing anything unusual/(wrong) -- just that there is one FAT32 partition on USB.

The GParted pic you posted -- is that what it looked like after zeroing out?  Or did you add that FAT32 partition to it yourself?

If the FAT32 partition was on there after running dd command, something is not right.  There should be nothing at all on the USB after dd completes -- not even a partition table.  If dd ran correctly, you'd need to create a new partition table on USB first, then create new partition(s) on it.

(As an aside, I have no idea whether "Disks" program works and/or if it truly zeros out a drive.  I've never used it for anything myself.)

As far as your error message goes, can you tell us exactly how you are trying to mount the drive?  What are the exact steps you're trying?

Reason I ask is because GParted pic shows that it is currently mounted at "/mnt".  So I'm wondering two things:

• Are you trying to mount something that is already mounted? -- thus getting an error message.
  
• Why is it mounted there?  Normally, when a USB gets plugged into computer it gets mounted by system at "/media/username".
  

P.s.  I've confirmed that my previously dead 2GB USB is back to working now.  I burned live ISO to it, booted and did an installation from it.