A while back, I tried installing OS X Snow Leopard on a USB Thumb Drive (64GB) in order to see whether it could run on a Mac with a broken HD. It worked, but was obviously incredibly slow (I didn't have an external hard drive to test with at the time).
Now I have the Mac fixed, but I'm having problems with the USB. It still has MacOS on it, but I want to erase it.
Here's what I tried on macOS High Sierra:
Disk Utility -> Select the drive (grayed out) -> Erase: Gives error "Cannot write to last block of device"
On Windows:
Command Prompt:
diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
clean
Error: Request could not be completed because of an I/O error.
On Ubuntu:
GParted -> Select my disk -> Delete MacOS X partition
Gives error: Error fsyncing/closing /dev/sdb: Input/output error
This might not be the right forum to ask about this, but I figured it was caused by OS X, so I put it on here. I anyone has a suggestion of a better forum to go to, please tell me.
Does anyone have any idea how I might fix the USB Drive?
Best Answer
"Cannot write to last block of device" is usually a connectivity error - it often crops up on HDs & SSDs with a bad cable.
For it to happen on a USB stick, then I'd say either the contacts are dirty or the device is dead [or dying].
You could try cleaning up the contacts with a bit of contact cleaner, then push/pulling the stick a dozen times in & out of a [non-powered] USB socket.
If that gains nothing, then I'm reasonably certain that if it's failing on three different machines, then it's had it.