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I'm not able to format my USB as stated here and while following these steps :

sudo su
fdisk -l
df
umount /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1

my bootable USB was changed to Unallocated format and it's current status is:

lsusb |grep 4082:

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1976:4082 Chipsbrand Microelectronics (HK) Co., Ltd.

lsblk |grep sdb:

sdb      8:16   1   3.7G  0 disk

I have used Gparted, but was not able to fix it.

How should I proceed?

Fabby
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Madhusudhanan
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    Your link has quite a lot of ways to do that! Can you be a bit clearer about what you did / what went wrong (in particular error messages) please? – Mark Williams Aug 13 '15 at 07:41
  • @Sridhar: Why did you remove the acceptance? Anything wrong that I should know about? – Fabby Aug 26 '15 at 20:35
  • Badblocks shows an error while repairing my friends USB@Fabby. Could tell me to fix by using codes which can I repair from Bootable USB to Normal USB? Please – Madhusudhanan Aug 27 '15 at 02:41
  • This is not how this site works: My original answer is still valid, so please add the acceptance ☑ back. If you would have a New question you can always ping me in the chat room and I'll help you if I can. (I'm only a Vorlon: not a god; I don't know everything) – Fabby Aug 29 '15 at 21:53
  • @Fabby Surely I'll do, but accepting means the answer is valid. But it's not working for me Fabby, so please Answer my question with an another answer Let the answer be there, I mean answered. May be it can work for others. So please Answer once a again. I don't like to dodge. Perhaps it might works for you, Don't Mistake me. – Madhusudhanan Aug 30 '15 at 03:11
  • Sorry, you must have misunderstood me: Clarifying my answer... Please read the revision – Fabby Aug 30 '15 at 10:07

2 Answers2

3

It looks like your 4GB USB stick is broken. To ensure no one uses a destructive test and just copy-pastes the stuff without reading the explanation, you have to type the next command all in lower-case.

WARNING Never use the -w option on a device containing an existing file system. This option erases data! If you want to do write-mode testing on an existing file system, use the -n option instead. It is slower, but it will preserve your data.

So to be absolutely sure it's broken (or not) do a:

sudo BadBlocks -w -s -o /tmp/BadBlocks.log /dev/XdY

Where X and Y are s and b

If you get errors while executing the BadBlocks command: the USB stick is irreparably broken. Throw it away and buy a new one.

And if it would give you no errors, you're in luck: just re-format with gparted but create an msdos partition table first.

Sorry to be the very likely harbinger of bad news.

Fabby
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0

Open a terminal, sudo -i to become root.
Run fdisk or parted, delete all partitions, create a new one. Use the fat32 option for type.
Run mksfs -t fat32 /dev/sdb (assuming you haven't moved your USB).
Done.

If that doesn't work, consider providing details as suggested above. Sometimes cat /dev/zero >/dev/sdb will remove corrupted stuff from USB.

Ron
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Mark Williams
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