I have pen drive that shows unloacted.I have tried many tools as gparted,fdisk,gpart,testdisk etc. but i can't make it usable.
Here is my test results:
Fdisk:
$ sudo fdisk -l
....
Disk /dev/sdc: 8010 MB, 8010194944 bytes
247 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1021 cylinders, total 15644912 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd0e2392f
Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table
So this device size is correctly identified as 8010MB (8GB) and is located at /dev/sdc. Interestingly, fdisk has reported that this device is not having a valid partition table. So something has happened to the partition table and I wanted to fix it with the help of fdisk command as follows
$sudo fdisk /dev/sdc
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x4c9b7827. Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered! Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table
Then i have tried to partition the pendrive
#sudo fdisk /dev/sdc
...
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)
Command (m for help): n
Partition type: primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free) extended Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-15644911, default 2048): Using default value 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-15644911, default 15644911): Using default value 15644911
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition
After doing this my pen drive still unlocated.Then i try to solve using gparted.
Gparted results:
I used "gparted" tool to add a partition table. As shown in above image, gparted shows this device at /dev/sdc with Partition=unallocated and FileSystem=unallocated, so it also identified that there was an issue. So I tried adding a partition table [by Device -> Create Partition Table…] of msdos type, but GUI displayed an error message as "Error while creating partition table". Command line also had some issues listed as below
$sudo gparted
======================
libparted : 3.1
======================
/dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label
/dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label
Now how can i solve the problem. thanks in advance.
Best Answer
You might try zeroing out the drive as mentioned in the comments by running...
... where sdx is the drive you're wanting to format.
BE VERY CAREFUL TO ENSURE THAT YOU ARE DOING THIS AGAINST THE RIGHT DRIVE!
Then create a new partition table...
This combined with running gparted with...
...worked for me. I had a USB stick that I dd'd an iso on to ot use for booting then had trouble recovering it. These were the steps I took and it as usable again.