How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

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esos
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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by esos »

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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by bigpup »

Have to ask this.

Have you tried plugging the USB stick into different USB ports?

Even on different computers?

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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by tosim »

@bigpup Yes-with same results-Nada. Thanks for asking though.

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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by bigpup »

If you used Ventoy to install something on these drives.

By default, Ventoy select exFAT filesystem for the main partition to hold iso files.

Puppy Linux does not come with support for the exfat file system(format)

Did you ever try this?

Do this from a running newer Puppy version and running normal as root user.
So You are using a newer version of Gparted and have full root ability.

First make sure desktop drive icon for the USB is showing it is not mounted.
If it is mounted.
Unmount it.

Use Gparted to get back to normal setup.
Select the USB stick as device to work on.

Make a new partition table
GParted > Device > Create Partition Table > MS-DOS

This will wipe clean all partitions and data on disk.
End up with unallocated space.

Make a partition and format it fat32.

If does not work.
What error messages do you get?

The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by peppyy »

Can't thank you enough for this post. Saved 2 of my usb 3.0 drives. Now I should be able to use one to put my working copy of fossa64 on it to tweak.

bigpup wrote: Mon Aug 21, 2023 6:31 am

If still no good, may have to first do this and then use Gparted.
In a terminal (console)
Be very careful to identify the USB stick in dev/sd part of command.
In this example it is sdb (desktop drive icons. Should be one for the USB giving it's label sdb, sdc, sdd, etc.......)

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=1

This basically deletes everything on the drive and writes all zeros on it.

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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by AntonioPt »

Hello all,
i got one of this usb stick of 256gb https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra- ... 07857Y17V
and the command line didn't work any other solutions ? thxx in advance

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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by wizard »

@AntonioPt

command line didn't work any other solutions

Have you tried the solutions in the other post?

wizard

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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by redquine »

I don't know if this is helpful, but I thought I'd drop it in...

One of my USB ports has become a bit wobbly, which has resulted in drives suddenly becoming disconnected while still in use. This freezes the session and I have no option but to power off and reboot - at which point they become connected again as read-only. I've established there's no point in trying to repair/overwrite them only for the same thing to happen again, so (when I remember!) I now only connect them to the other port which is still good.

I didn't want to lose the data already on them, but discovered that GParted could clear the "dirty bit" without destroying data. To try this: unmount the drive if it's already mounted, then open GParted and select the drive in question. Right-click it, choose 'Check' and click the green tick.

I reboot after this, but I don't know if that's necessary. Anyway, it might then give you the option of reformatting, repartitioning or whatever you want to do with it. :) In my own case, I can carry on using it as before.

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Re: How can I wipe a "Read only" flash drive?

Post by AntonioPt »

wizard wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2025 6:38 pm

@AntonioPt

command line didn't work any other solutions

Have you tried the solutions in the other post?

wizard

yeah i have tried without no luck this is the 2 USB that i have this issue first USB i screw up then i found a tool in Windows to turn around but i don't wanna do the some to this one even tho i didn't lose nutting yet since im still able to copy all,... i even made a backup but have hope to restore it and thxx for the tips

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