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Thread: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

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  1. #1
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    Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    I cannot delete or do anything with this USB. Here is the information error in Gparted: http://i.imgur.com/bwdxpXe.png

    First it was all good, I created new MS-DOS partition table, formatted it, but now it's not working. I cannot format it in windows either, it says it's write protected.

    When I try to delete it using Gparted it says: Input/output error during write on /dev/sdb

    Thanks for any help!

  2. #2
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    Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal

    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    Looks similar to the issues I had trying to re-format one of my usb sticks a while back. It wouldn't format thru anything GUI.
    I ended up getting it done thur the mkfs command in a terminal window. btw, iirc, you cannot have it mounted when trying to format it.

  3. #3
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    mkfs builds a linux file system? I want to format it with fat32 so I can burn Windows 8.1 iso and then install it on new pc.

  4. #4
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    Quote Originally Posted by sladeinflame7 View Post
    mkfs builds a linux file system? I want to format it with fat32 so I can burn Windows 8.1 iso and then install it on new pc.
    For fat32 the command would be

    mkfs –t vfat <USB-device-mount-point>

    Don't forget you may need sudo with it.

    There are other options in this article

    http://ksearch.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/format-usb-in-linux/


  5. #5
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    did you give your application root permissions by running sudo first?
    I am just a captian of the sea of data in my own mind.
    -~codenine75a~-
    United States of America.
    Usually operating from "Mora" A Dell Latitude E4300

  6. #6
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    Which application? If Gparted, then yes, it always asks for password.

  7. #7
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    Did you use an old version of gparted? Partitions now always start at sector 2048, but yours is the old start of sector 63. Windows changed to using sector 2048 with Vista and gparted changed serveral years later, but at least two years ago. Required for SSD & new 4K drives, so should not make huge difference on flash drive but old gparted may not now be correct?
    UEFI boot install & repair info - Regularly Updated :
    https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2147295
    Please use Thread Tools above first post to change to [Solved] when/if answered completely.

  8. #8
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    Updated all my software, when creating partition table with Gparted I get: Input/output error during write on /dev/sdb

    When I run
    Code:
    sudo mkfs –t vfat /dev/sdb
    I get:

    Code:
    mke2fs 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
    mkfs.ext2: invalid blocks 'vfat' on device '–t'

  9. #9
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    You normally format a partition, not a drive. Some do format a drive and it is like a super floppy but they does not work as it has no partitions to mount.

    This will totally erase the boot loader and partition table of a device. Be absolutely sure you have your flash drive as if run on wrong device you then have erased it. Then you can create & format a new partition. Change sdX to your drive.

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1

    Powerful command, but often misused and then nicknamed "dd" Data Destroyer
    http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ommand-362506/

    If you have used the dd method of copying an ISO to a flash drive the dd erase is required as the image copy of a flash drive does not create a standard partition table.
    UEFI boot install & repair info - Regularly Updated :
    https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2147295
    Please use Thread Tools above first post to change to [Solved] when/if answered completely.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
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    Re: Cannot format USB flash driver using Gparted

    I ran that command, and it finally allowed me to create partition table, and partition the drive. Everything was great, but then I tried to burn Win 8.1 iso to flash using Winusb and again got this error:

    Code:
    nstallation failed !Exit code: 512
    Log:
    Formating device...
    Mounting...
    mount: block device /home/mosquito/Downloads/Windows 8.1 AIO 20in1 x64 Pre-Activated v2 Nov2013/Win81AIO-20in1-x64-en-US-Nov2013-v2.iso is write-protected, mounting read-only
    Copying...
    Installing grub...
    /usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: error: cannot write to `/dev/sdc': Input/output error.
    Error occured !
    Syncing...
    /usr/bin/winusb: line 78: 19428 Terminated              while true; do
        sleep 0.05; echo 'pulse';
    done
    Cleaning...
    /usr/bin/winusb: line 78: 19811 Terminated              while true; do
        sleep 0.05; echo 'pulse';
    done
    Umounting and removing '/media/winusb_iso_1387819477_11222'...
    Umounting and removing '/media/winusb_target_1387819477_11222'...
    I guess I need to try different approach for burning iso.

    Also now when I run your command
    Code:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1
    again to clean the drive I still can't create new partition in Gparted, strange that it's not working now even though it worked minutes ago.

    Anyways, thanks a lot.

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