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The problem

I recently formated my USB stick using Gnome Disks (on Ubuntu). When doing so, i choose the option "No Partitioning (Empty)".

Gnome Disk options I choose:

Screenshot 1

After doing so, I am unable to format or use this USB stick in any way. Does someone know of a way to reinstall a partitioning system on a USB stick ? (to be clear, I don't care about the data that was on the usb, I just want it to be usable)

What I tried

When I plug it in and use Gnome Disk, all the formating options are grayed out, the only options left are "Turn Off" in the formatings options and "change mount options".

USB details on Gnome Disk:

Screenshot 2

It's even worse in the Windows Disk Manager, it is listed but I can't right click it or format it. Whe I acces it via the windows file explorer it tells me to insert a disk...

I tried to use Diskpart but when i use de "Clean" command i get the error "There is no media in the device".

I also tried gparted but it doesn't detect the drive.

So yeah... what in the world happend ? And is there a way to fix this ?

Serg
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Ext32
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1 Answers1

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It can sometimes help by completely wiping the drive with following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=2048

(substitute the correct device name instead of /dev/sdb). After that, you should be able to create a partition table and a partition.

You can also work with more granularity and remove signatures that exist on the disk.

For example, signatures present can be listed with:

$ sudo wipefs /dev/sdb
offset               type
----------------------------------------------------------------
0x200                gpt   [partition table]

0x8001               iso9660   [filesystem]
                     LABEL: Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon 64-bit
                     UUID:  2015-06-27-14-16-51-00

To remove the second signature of an ISO image, run

sudo wipefs -o 0x8001 /dev/sdb
vanadium
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  • When I use either of these commands, I get the same result: the error "medium not found". – Ext32 Apr 19 '22 at 21:55
  • I feel like I get these errors because it is trying to mount the media, but there is nothing to mount... is there a way to acces the volume in an other way ? – Ext32 Apr 19 '22 at 22:01
  • I cannot see from here whether you are doing all this correctly, of course. Nothing is possible when you click the cog in Gnome Disks? Else try terminal commands to create partitions and post error messages in your question: this can help seeing what might cause the problem. This all could also mean the stick is EOL. – vanadium Apr 20 '22 at 08:07