Ubuntu – I can’t format the live-USB pendrive (udisks-error-quark, 11)

16.04formatlive-usbpartitioningusb-drive

I can't format my pendrive (where ubuntu was loaded as live-usb) . Whenever I do , they say .

This partition cannot be modified because it contains a partition table; please reinitialize layout of the whole device. (udisks-error-quark, 11)

What to do ? I use Disks in Ubuntu 16.04

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Best Answer

If you don't have any valuable data on that drive you can create a new partition table with Gnome Disks if it doesn't like the current one:

  1. Click on the cogwheel for drive operations and select “Format…”.

  2. Select a suitable partition table type and click on “Format…” again. For a USB flash drive you probably want “MBR/DOS” as the partition type like in the screenshot.

  3. Confirm that you want to overwrite the partition table and lose all data on the drive.

  4. Afterwards create a new partition and format it.

    1. Click on the button with the ✚ sign below the partition layout.

    2. Select

      • suitable partition boundaries (you probably want to cover the entire available space which is the default),
      • a file system (for a USB drive probably FAT, exFAT, or NTFS), and

      • optionally a name.

    3. Click on “Create”, wait a while for the file system creation to finish (can be in the range of minutes for a large but slow drive) and you’re done!

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