[Clug-tech] Borked flash drive?

[Shawn]

Is it using an SD card?  Is there a "read only" switch that has been 
toggled?

Assuming it's not something obvious like that, try this:

sudo su    #become root
fdisk -l
fdisk /dev/sdX
# try to delete all partitions.
# write changes (before creating new partitions)
fdisk -l  #see if the partitions are gone
fdisk /dev/sdX
#create your partition
#write changes
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1  #format the partition

Try each of those in a console window.  If that doesn't do it, cut/paste 
that console window to us to see if we can see anything directly.

It does sound like you have a corrupt partition table, but fdisk should 
be able to clear that.  I wonder if a flash disk can be low-level 
formatted... hmmm...

Shawn


Mitch Brown wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> In a very complicated series of steps (me playing around), I managed to 
> screw the partition table up on my flash drive severely. When I mount 
> the drive, I can see the partition, and the files in it. Although I 
> cannot delete them, alter them, etc - they're "stuck". I can then 
> unmount the drive, and delete the partition through cfdisk. This has no 
> affect, upon recreating them (even in another format), the files are 
> still there, and "stuck". If I try and load up the drive in GParted, I 
> see the one partition, and as soon as I unmount it (so I can edit it), 
> GParted hangs on "Scanning sdb partitions...". The terminal output from 
> QTParted has left me with the following brief hint as to whats wrong:
> 
> Error: \POOL\MAIN\D\DBUS\��L
�.A is 707506k, but it has 1627 clusters 
> (13016k).
> 
> All I want to do is to completely purge this flash drive of everything 
> partitiony. Period.
> 
> How do I do this?
> 
> -Mitch
> 
> 
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