Formatting USB stick with an ISO present

[HermanAB]

Well, you can try fixing a USB device on Windows, which you will soon see will require Super Geek credentials.

On Linux, it is very easy if you know how: Zap the first bit of the disk with zeroes, then format as usual. On Windows it is practically impossible - unless you have a virtual machine with Linux or BSD in it!

[sudodus]

mkusb was made in order to help people manage USB pendrives in a safe and easy way. Please install it and try it. I think it will solve your acute problem. There are details and links in post #5.

The long-term problem, to get such capability into the standard tools in Ubuntu may be more difficult, because the Ubuntu developers may not understand that there is a problem (for non-geeks).

Sometimes there are more severe problems, for example that a USB pendrive is failing. It is suddenly read-only and you can no longer write to it. But sometimes there are other causes to the problem, so it is worthwhile to try in several ways before giving up. Maybe there is only confusion.

The following link and links from it can help analyze the problem, and if you are lucky, solve it, even when it looks like the drive is damaged beyond repair.

Can't format my usb drive. I have already tried with mkdosfs and gparted

[C.S.Cameron]

Well, you can try fixing a USB device on Windows, which you will soon see will require Super Geek credentials.

I have bricked several multi-partition flash drives trying to format in Windows. I have not tried since Windows 10 has been out though. Now if I need to format anything with more than one partition I use Ubuntu, either GParted, Disks or mkusb.

If the ISO partition is frozen in GParted, Disks can usually be used to unmount.

[HermanAB]

You can also do a 'lazy unmount' if it doesn't want come unstuck.

For example: "umount -l /dev/sdb"

[jgwphd]

Thanks for the information. Sudodus, I was able to use mkusb to recover the USB drive free space (I think?) and reformat the usb drive with the ISO9660 partition. The drive has no markings on it and gparted and nautilus report the free space as unknown. I didn't find a storage size selection in mkusb (is that correct?). I selected restore to a standard storage device" in mkusb and gave it a name "extra-stor" Mkusb did its thing and when it was done the drive showed 2GB. How do I know that is the correct size (it's an old drive and might be)? ...is there a storage size option somewhere or does it auto-magically figure out how much storage is available?

[HermanAB]

gparted will show you graphically what is going on.

[sudodus]

When selecting 'restore to a standard storage device', mkusb grabs all of the drive (except the first mibibyte) for a partition with the FAT32 file system. There is no storage size selection. If you want something more advanced, for example select the partition size(s), please use gparted after mkusb.

You can check the size of drive itself and the partition(s) with the following command lines,

sudo lsblk -f
sudo lsblk -m     # size in mibibytes, gibibytes (base 2)
sudo parted -ls   # size in megabytes, gigabytes (base 10)

[jgwphd]

Thanks for the information everyone! sudokus... I like the mkusb tool and showed it to a non-geek friend of mine. But he says it's still scary/geeky. ...there is reluctance by non-geeks to use it if you don't know all the jargon and you get warning messages of clearing, overwriting, resetting, etc. jargon ...which means impending doom to the non-geeks if you proceed, microsoft has us all conditioned to PC catastrophes ..LoL. I am not criticizing, but it would be nice if the tool had a "basic" function interface to just format any usb no matter what is on it, no questions asked (my original thread request) and then allow access to an advanced section for more sophisticated stuff. Maybe even add access to it from the Nautilus interface. ...my 2 cents.

BTW, I do like the ETCHER tool because it has a simple and as non-geeky as you can get interface, in my opinion.

[sudodus]

I see your point, @jgwphd.

Yes, maybe the second best alternative for non-geeks would be a separate dedicated tool with a graphical user interface for the purpose 'restore to a standard storage device', for example with the name 'format-usb'.

And the very best alternative might be to have access to it via (or built into) the file browser (Files alias nautilus in standard Ubuntu).

[jgwphd]

Again ....Many THANKS to everyone!!!! You guys have been a great help.