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Brand new 32 Gb usb, but when I plug it in, I can only see 5.5 kb. So, I cannot make any partition table on it.

I'm wondering if it can be fixed, or if it's a total loss.

I'm running Manjaro, with kernel 5.7.9-1

Output of sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M:

dd: error writing '/dev/sda': No space left on device
1+0 records in
0+0 records out
5632 bytes (5.6 kB, 5.5 KiB) copied, 1.65556 s, 3.4 kB/s

I tried some advice on this post mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock In my system, the usb is /dev/sda, and there are no partitions on it (no /dev/sda1)

Running fsck -N /dev/sda outputs

fsck from util-linux 2.35.2
[/usr/bin/fsck.ext2 (1) -- /dev/sda] fsck.ext2 /dev/sda

So I tried fsck.ext2 -v /dev/sdc1 and got a bad suerblock message.

Running mke2fs -n /dev/sa1 leads to

mke2fs 1.45.6 (20-Mar-2020)
/dev/sda contains `ISO-8859 text, with very long lines, with no line terminators' data
Proceed anyway? (y,N)

If I say "y", I get /dev/sda: Not enough space to build proposed filesystem while setting up superblock

I also tried to run gdisk /dev/sda, where I can see "not present" for all partitions tables, and using the "verify disk" ("v" option) I get

Problem: GPT claims the disk is larger than it is! (Claimed last usable
sector is 18446744073709551593, but backup header is at
10 and disk size is 11 sectors.

If I try writing changes, I'll reach an error

Unable to save backup partition table! Perhaps the 'e' option on the expertsmenu will resolve this problem
The 'e' option on the experts menu will probably fix this problem

Any chance I can get it working?

Cheers, and thank you in advance.

Ricardo Kullock
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  • Please post the output of sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M where sdX is your entire flash drive (not just the first partition). – Artem S. Tashkinov Aug 11 '20 at 17:08
  • Edited to include the output you asked – Ricardo Kullock Aug 11 '20 at 17:36
  • 32 Gb usb what? ... it's like saying I'll have a plate of hot – jsotola Aug 11 '20 at 19:02
  • If you used dd to write an ISO, you converted it to hybrid DVD/flash drive. You need to convert to standard partitioned drive. Only then can you create a partition. Reset USB flash that was dd'd to make it usable again, reuse https://askubuntu.com/questions/939230/formatting-a-usb-stick-unable-to-operate-usb/939266#939266 & https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb#Re-use_the_pendrive You cannot run fsck on a drive, only ext4 formatted partition. – oldfred Aug 11 '20 at 19:40
  • Please just check that ls -l /dev/sda shows it really is a device and not a file – Chris Davies Aug 11 '20 at 22:33

1 Answers1

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Based on your dd output your flash drive is completely broken. RMA it or dispose of it.

Artem S. Tashkinov
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