Cannot repair a corrupted usb flash drive

Question

I have an 8GB USB 2.0 flash drive (no-name), on which I tried a few days ago to copy a film of about 6GB. The flash drive had NTFS file system so I thought there will be no problems. But at some point an error had occurred that I didn't noticed and after some time I removed the flash drive without seeing the error. Now the flash drive is unusable. In Windows I get a Drive is write protected error, so I tried with Ubuntu.

I have run GParted as superuser, with the partition not mounted. This is how GParted recognizes the drive:

And in the Information tab it is said

Unable to detect file system! Possible reasons are
 - The file system is damaged
 - The file system is unknown to GParted
 - There is no file system available (un-formatted)
 - The device entry /dev/sdd1 is missing

Ultimately, when I try to format (simply format, or delete partition then make a new partition), I get the following errors:

Input/output error during write on /dev/sdd
Error fsyncing/closing /dev/sdd: Input/output error

I tried using dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd bs=512 count=1 to clear all data, then mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdd1 to format to FAT32, but this has no effect. Also, I searched for bad sectors with badblocks -sv -b 512 /dev/sdd, and it returned 0 bad blocks.

Any ideas of how can I make this flash drive usable?

Update: I have managed to wipe the data (fill with zero) using Minitool Partition Wizard under windows, but now under Windows/Ubuntu the drive is recognized as "read-only"... can't do anything to it...

GParted didn't work, so try this answer. It worked for me after I used the dd command to overwrite an 8GB USB flash drive. — karel, Jul 21 '14 at 08:57
@karel thanks, but the same errors appear, the drive is in the same state ... — Dumi01, Jul 21 '14 at 09:35
thats why I would like to repair it, I didn't bought it, I received it as part of a prize at a contest — Dumi01, Jul 21 '14 at 09:57
Hey @Dumi01 did you solve this issue? I'm facing the same thing in my 16GB flash drive... — Parto, Dec 26 '14 at 07:44

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 24 '15 at 21:30

If writing with dd to the disk fails then it's quite possible your USB is bricked and will not function right again.

USB drives do wear out - whether it be an external USB hard drive with spinning platters or a standard flash drive. Input/Output error indicates a problem with data write/read which can indicate broken hardware.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 21 '14 at 12:18

0

I've had a similar problem in the past. I used Photorec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec and recovered my files and then re-formated the usb drive. It works okay now and I got the files that I wanted.

answered Jul 21 '14 at 12:18

Steven Booth

1

I don't have anything on it that I need to recover, I was looking for a way to make the usb drive work again, I cannot format it... – Dumi01 Jul 22 '14 at 08:05

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 23 '15 at 07:11

0

Go to Device -> Create Partition Table. If it asks you which type, use the default (MS-DOS). That will destroy the data on the USB drive. Then you should be able to create new partitions.

answered May 23 '15 at 07:11

Smile4ever

1,081

Cannot repair a corrupted usb flash drive

3 Answers3