How to Format a USB Stick

formatusb

My USB stick looks dead :

victor@X301A1:~$ umount /dev/sdc1

victor@X301A1:~$ sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdc1
mkfs.vfat 3.0.12 (29 Oct 2011)
mkfs.vfat: unable to open /dev/sdc1: Read-only file system

victor@X301A1:~$ sudo hdparm -r0 /dev/sdc1
/dev/sdc1:
 setting readonly to 0 (off)
 readonly      =  0 (off)

victor@X301A1:~$ sudo fsck -n /dev/sdc1
fsck de util-linux 2.20.1
dosfsck 3.0.12, 29 Oct 2011, FAT32, LFN
/.Trash-1000/files/sans_titre
 Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir. 
/.Trash-1000/files/Bus CAN
 Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir. 
Reclaimed 190903 unused clusters (781938688 bytes).
Free cluster summary wrong (1001897 vs. really 1383698)
  Auto-correcting.
Leaving file system unchanged.
/dev/sdc1: 8052 files, 566660/1950358 clusters

Is there anyway for me to recover my USB stick ? Thank

Best Answer

Well, one could try zero'ing the raw block device to see if that can work. If you can write to that then you may be able to create a clean partition table, create a new partition and format that.

Suppose the USB stick is on /dev/sdc, first make sure /dev/sdc1 is unmounted:

umount /dev/sdc1

See if you can then clear the partition table, say by copying a bunch of zeros over the first few K

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=16

If that works, see if you can write zeros to the whole device without it failing. To easily see if the kernel can't write to the device, first clear the current kernel messages and throw them away using:

sudo dmesg -c > /dev/null

..then zero the entire device:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

..this will take a while. dd will complete when the raw block device is completely written to, or an error has occurred.

Then, check to see if the kernel has complained about the device, using:

dmesg

..if you see a load of error messages then you know that the USB stick is probably not in good condition.

However, if this works fine run fdisk or parted to create the partitions from clean, e.g. with fdisk I use:

sudo fdisk /dev/sdc
Command (m for help): n
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-7796735, default 2048): <return>
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-7796735, default 7796735): <return>
Command (m for help): t
Hex code (type L to list codes): 6
Command (m for help): w

..note just press return for the First and Last sector questions, fdisk will chose the correct defaults (which will be different to my example above). And then format the partition with VFAT:

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1

and then remove and re-insert the drive. It should be cleanly formatted.

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