Thanks very much, Chris and Chris, for your detailed thoughts. I left the stick with the IT Support at work (and I won't be back there for a few days), and I'd prefer to show them your suggestion about the partitions and see what they might come up with (though I saw them playing around with the partitions while they tried to find a solution).
I've only had two USB sticks cark it (out of quite a few sticks I've used) in the past. The IT Support at work did look for an external lock switch, which there wasn't - as Chris G said, they are pretty rare. I only had one stick where that was a facility, and that was years ago. Interesting suggestion to wipe a new thumb drive and recreate your own partition from the beginning. I might do that when I next use a new drive (perhaps the one I've bought in order to install the latest LTS), but I need to find a reliable Windows program to create the installer on that USB stick - I've read about 'Etcher'. I'll let you know when the IT guys at work get to the USB stick again. Cheers David On Mon, Jul 1, 2024, at 12:31 AM, Chris Robinson wrote: > > Actually, I've never had a problem with a thumb drive that couldn't be fixed. > > There IS a problem with the partition table placed there at the factory > format on some thumb drives. From memory, it was a bug with the way the > original DOS programs did partition table formats. It wasn't a problem until > FAT32, but for some reason Linux systems can have problems with drives that > previously worked fine. It usually pops up after you format the partition. > > What I'd recommend is to use DD to write zeros to the first couple of KB. > This will overwrite the partition table. You'll then need to recreate a > FAT32 partition and format it. > > `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=4K > > Change sdX to the device name for the unmounted thumb drive. Do NOT get this > wrong because any device written to will be very difficult to recover if you > haven't previously made a copy.` > The usual problem I came across was that the drive could not be accessed at > all, even to partition or format until the partition table was erased. I've > heard of similar problems to David's as well. > > If you don't want to mess around with DD (huge potential for disaster if you > write nulls to the wrong drive) then you could try using the disks program, > delete the partition table (make sure that gets written, maybe exit the > program to commit the write) and then recreate a new compliant FAT32 > partition. I've heard of that working, but of course is not possible in > cases where the device can't be accessed or written to. > > I'll be interested to know this solves the problem, because it would mean > that thumb drive manufacturers are still using a very, very, old spec. for > partition tables. I pretty routinely wipe any new thumb drive and create my > own partition, and like I said I've never had a problem with any thumb drive > ever. Some of them are tiny ones that must be a couple of decades old that > still get used to transfer a few files to another computer somewhere. > > Chris > > > > > > On Sunday, 30 June 2024 at 11:29:20 pm AEST, Chris Guiver <guiv...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > G'day David > > > Should a USB stick that was used with ‘Startup Disk Creator’ be able to be > > reformatted for everyday read/write work again? > > Yes, however USB thumb-drives are really just cheap media; built to a low > price without any error checking, and they fail. I suspect your thumb-drive > has failed; even if not the whole device, enough of it that the contents can > no longer be changed. > > There are some USB drives which can be triggered to be RO (Read Only), but > they are/were rare (more expensive) and usually have a somewhat disguised > button/slide that prevents writing if the slider is in the protect mode. Your > USB 'stick' could be one of these, but only someone seeing the device will be > able to tell you (and they weren't common, so aren't often recognized) > > The write of an ISO to a thumb-drive does cause the image itself to be > written as READ ONLY, but that is only to prevent corruption, and that RO > cannot prevent a reformat; as its purpose is only to protect the image from > CHANGE, nor erasure. > > Again, I think your USB flash/thumb-drive is just faulty... I'm throwing out > 2-5 per year because they no longer can be trusted (I always DIFF or confirm > a write to thumb-drive is perfect before I trust it, and those thumb-drives > are failing my checks) It's a cheap consumable media, and every write to it > can destroy it. > > Chris g. > > > On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 11:01 PM David <ag...@justemail.net> wrote: >> Hi folks >> >> In the past I had 20.04 LTS installed on an old laptop and when 22.04 LTS >> became available I used the application in Ubuntu called ‘Startup Disk >> Creator’ to write the new ISO image to a USB stick in order to do a clean >> install of 22.04 LTS. That process worked fine, the USB stick did the job >> fine. >> >> Earlier this year the laptop stopped working and I had it repaired >> professionally, new SSD instead of the hard drive. They put Windows onto it >> so that they could check things. I don’t have another Ubuntu machine on >> which to use ‘Startup Disk Creator’ again, so I’ll be looking for a Windows >> option for creating a USB for installing from. >> >> It was then that I examined the USB stick for the first time since I had >> used ‘Startup Disk Creator’ a couple of years back or so for the install of >> 22.04 LTS. I understood that ‘Startup Disk Creator’ had formatted the USB >> stick for its purposes, and figured that in Windows I could reformat it with >> FAT32 or exFAT in order to use the stick again for another purpose. Windows >> couldn’t format it, saying that the stick is ‘write-protected’. The IT >> Support staff at my workplace have not been able to remove the >> write-protection and get the stick usable again with any of their tools. >> They used some sort of partition manager tool, and tried via a Mac laptop >> too. >> It feels a bit like how people described non-reusable CDs and DVDs as >> beer-coasters in the past. >> >> Is this outcome something that ‘Startup Disk Creator’ is known for, or have >> I just had bad luck? >> >> Should a USB stick that was used with ‘Startup Disk Creator’ be able to be >> reformatted for everyday read/write work again? >> >> Cheers >> David >> >> -- >> ubuntu-au mailing list >> ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com >> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au > -- > ubuntu-au mailing list > ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au > -- > ubuntu-au mailing list > ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au >
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