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Thread: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

  1. #1
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    Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    I have Ubuntu 18.04 on a USB stick. It worked fine while I need it. Now, I'd like to reclaim all the space on the USB stick (just like when I bought it from the store). When I try to format the drive I get errors out of nautilus (even in supervisor mode). Is there some simple and quick utility/tool that allows me to just wipe the UBS stick clean and I don't have to deal with partitions or any other technicalities? ...I just want to get the USB drive back to when I brought it home from the store? ....just back-up storage.

    Thanks for any recommendations!

  2. #2
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    gparted is probably the easiest tool to use. Select the right device (drop-down on the top left) and then menu Device -> Create partition table. You wand an msdos type partition table.

    Don't do it to the wrong device!

  3. #3
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    Be careful, some USB sticks can't be formatted too often. It might be better to simply remove the files by deleting them piecemeal.

  4. #4
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    You can use the dd command if you have a Linux OS available but the simplest method is using GParted to create a new partition table. You don't indicate what you did to format the usb or what errors you got. If you don't want anything saved from the usb, the method of using GParted is the simplest.

  5. #5
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    Quote Originally Posted by The Cog View Post
    gparted is probably the easiest tool to use. Select the right device (drop-down on the top left) and then menu Device -> Create partition table. You wand an msdos type partition table.

    Don't do it to the wrong device!
    +1

    Try first with gparted.

    If still problems, you can install and use mkusb and select the menu option 'restore to a Standard storage device'. It will wipe the first mibibyte (which will effectively remove data, that might confuse gparted and other tools). After that it will create an MSDOS partition table and a partition with a FAT32 file system (which is a de facto standard for USB sticks).

    If you want another partition structure or another file system, you can let mkusb 'wipe 1 (the first) Mibibyte', and after that use gparted to create what you want.

    help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

    help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/wipe

  6. #6
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    Quote Originally Posted by yancek View Post
    You can use the dd command if you have a Linux OS available but the simplest method is using GParted to create a new partition table. You don't indicate what you did to format the usb or what errors you got. If you don't want anything saved from the usb, the method of using GParted is the simplest.
    Definitely not dd if op doesn't know about gparted!

    gparted is not installed by default, so

    Code:
    sudo apt install gparted

  7. #7
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    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    GParted seems to me to have trouble unmounting ISO9660 partitions.
    mkusb always works for me in the "restore to a Standard storage device" mode.

  8. #8
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    This is just an observation so please don't get mad at me. I find it "interesting" that doing something as simple as taking an existing USB drive (and not caring what is on it) and clearing it off to an empty (new from the store) state requires "geek level skills". I was working with a friend of mine (non-geek) and in the course of our discussion I told him to grab a USB stick to back up some files but there wasn't enough space because an .iso partition was there. We tried to format it (talking over the phone) and it became obvious that formatting wouldn't work from nautilus if the USB drive had partitions (I have also run into formatting USB drive problems in the past with read/write permissions). To me this is an Ubuntu usability issue. Why the need for geek level skills to do some simple house cleaning chores such as creating a back-up USB drive from old drives (laying around your office) or restoring no longer needed drives to new from the store status (without a lot of investigative work and option choices that are meaningless to the non-geek community). There should be a simple capability that says "restore drive to new" with a single click and a warning to proceed. Using tools such as gparted by non-geek people (even with someone directing over the phone) seems risky and the wrong answer. My 2 cents. ...and I do appreciate all the help and suggestions. Many Thanks. I bet I am not the first one to mention this situation and I feel there is likely a simple tool (like Etcher) somewhere out there and hopefully some one knows about it.
    Last edited by jgwphd; July 18th, 2018 at 06:06 PM.

  9. #9
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    Quote Originally Posted by jgwphd View Post
    This is just an observation so please don't get mad at me. I find it "interesting" that doing something as simple as taking an existing USB drive (and not caring what is on it) and clearing it off to an empty (new from the store) state requires "geek level skills". I was working with a friend of mine (non-geek) and in the course of our discussion I told him to grab a USB stick to back up some files but there wasn't enough space because an .iso partition was there. We tried to format it (talking over the phone) and it became obvious that formatting wouldn't work from nautilus if the USB drive had partitions (I have also run into formatting USB drive problems in the past with read/write permissions). To me this is an Ubuntu usability issue. Why the need for geek level skills to do some simple house cleaning chores such as creating a back-up USB drive from old drives (laying around your office) or restoring no longer needed drives to new from the store status (without a lot of investigative work and option choices that are meaningless to the non-geek community). There should be a simple capability that says "restore drive to new" with a single click and a warning to proceed. Using tools such as gparted by non-geek people (even with someone directing over the phone) seems risky and the wrong answer. My 2 cents. ...and I do appreciate all the help and suggestions. Many Thanks. I bet I am not the first one to mention this situation and I feel there is likely a simple tool (like Etcher) somewhere out there and hopefully some one knows about it.
    Actually it is very simple. You can use the disk utility without installing gparted. Disk utility has simple one click way to reformat (though of course like all such tools you have to be careful in identifying the correct device)

    I started Ubuntu in 2010 with little experience with computers in general and using gparted to do things with usb drive was easy as a piece of cake. I had a bunch of usb drive and always creating and deleting oses with no issue. Doing partition and creating dualboots was a lot easier with Linux than with Windows for me then (I remember my brother was trying to make a dualboot between Windows 7 and XP and it was really complicated, now with UEFI and what not it is diffult no matter what you use as long as Windows is involved, multibooting with Linux distros is still a piece of cake)

    But when you ask a question in a forum people would give you answers at different levels, some maybe overkill and others may not be appropriate to beginners (such as dd) So it may be confusing to new users. Personally I try to recommend solutions using software that either come installled by default or can be installed easily from repo (without ppa or downloading from somewhere) even though they may not be the best or most powerful for all possible use cases.

  10. #10
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    Re: Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

    Quote Originally Posted by C.S.Cameron View Post
    GParted seems to me to have trouble unmounting ISO9660 partitions.
    mkusb always works for me in the "restore to a Standard storage device" mode.
    Not for me.

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