Pendrive not detected in Ubuntu 16.04 but it is showing in disk

Question

Ubuntu is not detecting my USB drive as a mountable volume, but it is showing in Disks, as seen in the below screenshot:

What can I do to format this drive?

lsusb output is as

$ lsusb

>

 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1f75:0916 Innostor Technology Corporation 
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 05c8:036e Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd (Foxlink) Webcam
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Answer 1

Okey, first reboot the computer. This solves some problems even though it seems unlikely in this case.

After finishing the reboot, open GParted and try to see if the drive (and the volume contained within) are visible.

Now, select your drive in GParted, and choose the partition that should appear. Right-click on that partition and go to the "Format To..." option. From there, select the type of filesystem that you'd like to format the drive to. I'd recommend you use FAT32, but the choice is yours. Then, click the Confirm button in the top menu.

After some time, your drive should have successfully formatted and you will be able to see the volume mount on Ubuntu.

If you want to avoid data loss, try to see if the drive is recognizable from another machine. If it is, copy any data over that you'd like to save and format from that machine.

Command Line Method

First try to see your volumes by writing

fdisk -l

This will show your volumes. When you see /dev/sdb (and its partition sdb1), run the following commands to format your drive

umount /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat -n 'pendrive-name' -I /dev/sdb1

After that you may eject the drive with

sudo eject /dev/sdb

Then, unplug and replug the device. Ubuntu should detect the drive and allow you to mount it.

Answer 2

I had the same issue. On searching I realised that it was because I have removed my pendrive in the middle of formatting. So to make it visible again I followed the following steps:

1. Open Disks application.
2. Search for your pendrive on left pane. If you find it, click on it and then just below the highlighted orange part click on the settings symbol.
3. In the dropdown menu select the Format Partition option. Keep all the options as they are and add a name to the pen drive and then click on Format. Wait while it is formatting. Once done you'll be able to see the pendrive again.

Answer 3

1. Open "Disks application" from ubuntu applications
2. Search for your pendrive on left pane. If you find it, click on it and then just below the highlighted orange part click on the settings symbol.
3. Keep all the options as they are and add a name to the pen drive and then click on Next. And click Format to support for all OS. Wait while it is formatting. Once done you'll be able to see the PLAY BUTTON BELOW THE PANE.
4. Click on play button, which is right below the pane, and then open the pendrive which is present in desktop.
5. Then do the safe eject it.
6. Close the disk application as well.

Answer 4

using mount command find your pendrive connected. If it is converted to bootable then it doesnt show as connected device but just as bootable disk

answer given by Kaz Wolfe solves the problem by converting it to vfat fs

Answer 5

From your screenshot, it seems as though your drive is just toast and no longer works (note the No Media message).

Unfortunately, this most likely means that it's time to buy a new flash drive.

If you'd rather not give up hope yet, there are still some things you can try to do.

• Remove, Reboot, Re-Insert
  This might just be a small temporary error. Remove the drive, reboot your machine, and re-insert the drive. Check for any difference in behavior.

• Try a different machine
  Just for the sake of completeness, try to use a different computer and see if the behavior is the same. If it is, your drive may need more advanced recovery techniques.

• Recover Existing Data
  You can potentially use photorec or other utilities to try to salvage any existing data off of the drive. Target /dev/sdb or wherever your drive is and pray that it works.

• DD-Shock Therapy
  If you don't care about the contents of your drive, you can write zeros to it. Sometimes this can "unstick" a broken flash drive and allow it to work again. Run the below command, changing /dev/sdX to the proper drive location.

  sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX
  

If you can not target the volume with these commands (and you're sure you're targeting the right device), there is very little you can do for the drive short of very drastic data forensics/recovery methods that are very likely not worth the cost to implement. Just bite the dust and get a new drive. However, for the sake of completeness, I'll give resources anyways. Most flash storage manufacturers have special utilities that allow them to write data to the raw flash device in order to initialize it and prepare it for shipping. Provided you could get your hands on this software (which seems to often be Windows-only), you may be able to re-initialize the flash drive. However, this is left as an exercise to the reader.

Innostor flash drives don't seem to be the best quality when it comes to drives, and therefore are likely to be prone to high levels of failure. If you can, I recommend getting a replacement drive from a reputable brand like SanDisk or similar. Even if you use advanced data forensics/recovery tools to attempt to fix this problem, you're very likely to run into it again.