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Garrett avatar Ubuntu

Cannot mount or reformat USB drive

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Garrett

Background

Currently using Ubuntu 20.04. I formatted the drive with Disks utility and added two Linux ISO's from my Ubuntu system onto the drive. The dirve is USB 3.0 64 GB. I had two ISO files, Kali Linux and Parrot OS on it. I was planning to use use the USB to boot both those OS's from a laptop.

I was using VMware Fusion on my Macbook pro laptop (intel i5 2017 13") going through the installation process of Kali Linux. My Mac shutoff at a critical point and now the drive does not pop up in Finder/File Explorer.

There are no partitions listed on the drive when using sudo fdisk -l or Disks application on Ubuntu.

What I've tried

My Ubuntu PC is able to see the drive with lsusb, its labeled as:

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 1f75:0918 Innostor Technology Corporation STORAGE DEVICE

I am also able to see the drive in the Disks application as shown here and when I go into the settings menu all I see is this.

I found out where the drive was located with sudo lshw (also shown in Disks manager) which indicated the drive was at /dev/sdd:

...
     *-scsi:3
          physical id: a
          logical name: scsi9
          capabilities: emulated scsi-host
          configuration: driver=usb-storage
        *-disk
             description: SCSI Disk
             product: STORAGE DEVICE
             vendor: General
             physical id: 0.0.0
             bus info: scsi@9:0.0.0
             logical name: /dev/sdd
             version: 0009
             serial: +
             capabilities: removable
             configuration: logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512
           *-medium
                physical id: 0
                logical name: /dev/sdd

I have also tried mounting the drive via mount

garrett@garrett-desktop:~$ sudo mkdir /media/usbstick
garrett@garrett-desktop:~$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdd /media/usbstick/
mount: /media/usbstick: no medium found on /dev/sdd.
garrett@garrett-desktop:~$ eject -t /dev/sdd
eject: unable to open `/dev/sdd'
garrett@garrett-desktop:~$ eject --trayclose /dev/sdd
eject: unable to open `/dev/sdd'
garrett@garrett-desktop:~$ sudo eject /dev/sdd
eject: unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument
garrett@garrett-desktop:~$ udisks --detach /dev/sdd
udisks: command not found
garrett@garrett-desktop:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdd /media/usbstick/
mount: /media/usbstick: no medium found on /dev/sdd.

It is also not shown in sudo fdisk -l

Goal

I don't care about preserving any data on the drive, there were just two ISO files on it and nothing else. I just need to reformat the drive back to a usable state.

EDIT: cannot format partitions on the drive from Disks utility indicated here

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ChanganAuto avatar
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ChanganAuto
In order reformat the drive you can simply remove all partitions and create a new with the file system you want and for that you can use Disks or Gparted or MKUSB which also has a very useful option to recover the drive to a normal mass storage device (pretty much does all the above but format it as FAT32).
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guiverc avatar
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guiverc
You've provided no OS & release details; you mention many (mostly off-topic here) and it's unclear which you're actually asking about. Your commands also show errors; ie. there are differences between drives and partitions; as most of use partition tables on drives meaning our data sits on partitions (you instead try and mount disk device??? as if it wasn't a NTFS *file-system* but something created to be non-microsoft compatible; windows requires it be on a GPT/legacy partition table unless it's a *floppy*). Beyond your errors/misunderstandings, no *clear* OS & release details were provided.
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Garrett avatar
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Garrett
@guiverc Ubuntu 20.04... sorry, I thought that it was implied that I was using Ubuntu during this since I am on askUbuntu. I originally formatted the drive as FAT using Disks application on Ubuntu. It seems the drive was corrupted when running VMware on my mac.
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Garrett avatar
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Garrett
@ChanganAuto I am not able to format the dive in Disks application, the options are greyed out except for "Edit Mount Options..." Additionally, the drive is not listed in both Gparted and MKUSB applications (using GUI).
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guiverc avatar
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guiverc
When you format a drive; that usually means creating a partition table and (optionally) also adding a file-system on the drive/device. The `device /dev/sdd` refers to the drive, but not whatever partition table & file-systems that were formatted on it; ie. the first partition is usually `sdd1` meaning that's what you `mount` - ie. not the *device* itself, but the file-system stored on a partition. (Please be specific with details, your original question highlighted off-topic OSes!)
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Garrett avatar
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Garrett
@guiverc The drive that I am trying to access does not seem to have any partitions on it. There are no partitions listed in any terminal commands I run for the drive and Disks application shows the drive as "No Media" please refer to screenshots attached in the post via imgur links.
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Garrett avatar Ubuntu
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Garrett

An important concept that was outlined in the comments above is that dev/sdd is the drive itself. One must mount a specific partition on the drive, not the actual drive. You are not able to mount a drive that does not have any partitions. Instead, you must format it first.

Empty/non-partitioned drives are explained in this link: USB flash drive not working or is appearing as an empty disk drive, Disk Management reports "No Media" discusses why the USB drive is inaccessible.

"No Media" means the flash memory controller cannot communicate with the NAND flash memory on the drive. Because of this, it appears to the computer as an empty disk drive. This is usually caused by the NAND flash failing. To the computer, the drive is not much different than a floppy or optical drive with no disk inserted.

As a result, it is not possible to access any data on the drive, nor is it possible to repartition or reformat the drive. Again, from the standpoint of the computer, there is no medium in the drive to be formatted or repartitioned.

There are a few links to software listed in the post that may recover the drive.

In my instance, the drive seems to be corrupt and inaccessible. The NAND flash memory on the drive cannot communicate with the flash memory controller. This most likely happened when my laptop shut off during the installation process of a VM where the installation software was writing to the USB drive. When it was interrupted it corrupted the drive.

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