1

Wasn't thinking I'm going to end up here.

What happened?

I wanted to benchmark the speeds of a USB flash drive, which was USB 2.0. My system is Debian bullseye/sid 5.8.7-1. I used the same method which I use to benchmark my SSD:

# The USB drive was mounted and I went to it
$ cd <USB Flash drive>
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024 conv=fdatasync,notrunc status=progress

I waited and waited, but no results came out. So I thought cancelling. I did an endless stream of CTRL + Cs on the terminal, no result. I tried to safely remove the usb, but it said it was in use. So, I've pulled out the USB drive. I tried the same commands again, same result: waited some time (~5 minutes) and nothing. This time I pressed a lot of CTRL + Cs + tried to kill the dd process (even with SIGKILL) + safely remove. Nothing worked, so, I've pulled out again the USB. Next time I plugged it in, it wasn't recognized nor auto-mounted, so I couldn't access it. And that's the problem.

What I've tried?

  1. Plugged the USB on Windows: it is not recognized in File Explorer (no volume is mounted when I plug the USB flash drive) and its capacity is 0MB. Note: The real capacity is 32GB. Photo: USB in Windows
  2. Tried mkusb (based on this article), but it says: "No suitable target device found". If I plug another USB flash drive, mkusb detects it.

More details

  • Output of tail -f /var/log/messages when I insert the drive:
Sep 17 16:08:08 Area51 kernel: [ 5241.197897] usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 18 using xhci_hcd
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 kernel: [ 5241.346189] usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=ffff, idProduct=1201, bcdDevice= 0.00
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 kernel: [ 5241.346194] usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 kernel: [ 5241.347399] usb-storage 1-3:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 kernel: [ 5241.347716] scsi host3: usb-storage 1-3:1.0
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 18: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3"
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 mtp-probe: bus: 1, device: 18 was not an MTP device
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 18: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3"
Sep 17 16:08:09 Area51 mtp-probe: bus: 1, device: 18 was not an MTP device
Sep 17 16:08:10 Area51 kernel: [ 5242.354414] scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access     NAND     USB2DISK         0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
Sep 17 16:08:10 Area51 kernel: [ 5242.355049] sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Sep 17 16:08:10 Area51 kernel: [ 5242.386958] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
  • Output of lsusb:
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 8087:0a2a Intel Corp. Bluetooth wireless interface
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:57f5 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam
Bus 001 Device 018: ID ffff:1201  
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0b05:1854 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. ITE Device(8910)
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:c092 Logitech, Inc. G102 LIGHTSYNC Gaming Mouse
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub 

This is the problematic flash drive: Bus 001 Device 018: ID ffff:1201

One thing to note it's that the USB flash drive now doesn't have it's vendor and product name.

2
  • 1
    Chances are you've killed it. They don't like being interrupted. See superuser.com/questions/1125282/… for related info.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 10:35
  • "One thing to note it's that the USB flash drive now doesn't have it's vendor and product name." - it's a firmware problem then, it's basically bricked. Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 15:22

3 Answers 3

0

Get your hands on a low level format tool, then perform a low level format. After the LLF, create partition, and do a regular format. That should solve your issue.

3
  • Thanks for your response. Can you give me a link to such tool and also a tutorial on how to use it?
    – rel0adedd
    Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 9:51
  • I think this one is probably the best one out there. hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool
    – Ben Fourie
    Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 11:48
  • I tried the tool: it doesn't even recognize my usb (I've also tried changing ports).
    – rel0adedd
    Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 11:57
0

This tool have rescued my flash drives (link) several times, when OS was unable to create partitions on device.

1
  • Thanks for your answer. I tried with the tool you mentioned, but no success. Photo: HP Tool
    – rel0adedd
    Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 9:48
0

Faced a similar problem, just that it was listed as 32 MB drive instead of 4 GB which it is.

used diskpart utility of windows to clear the readonly attribute. Note : irrespective of whether your usb drive is set to read only or not, execute the attributes command to clear off the read only flag.

Then I used HP tool and this time the tool was able to format the drive and was detected as 4GB usb drive

Follow this link for Diskpart https://www.howtogeek.com/740429/how-to-remove-write-protection-on-windows-10/

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  • 1
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    – Community Bot
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 13:26

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