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I'm not able to format my USB as stated here and while following these steps :

sudo su
fdisk -l
df
umount /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1

my bootable USB was changed to Unallocated format and it's current status is:

lsusb |grep 4082:

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1976:4082 Chipsbrand Microelectronics (HK) Co., Ltd.

lsblk |grep sdb:

sdb      8:16   1   3.7G  0 disk

I have used Gparted, but was not able to fix it.

How should I proceed?

Fabby
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Madhusudhanan
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    Your link has quite a lot of ways to do that! Can you be a bit clearer about what you did / what went wrong (in particular error messages) please? – Mark Williams Aug 13 '15 at 07:41
  • @Sridhar: Why did you remove the acceptance? Anything wrong that I should know about? – Fabby Aug 26 '15 at 20:35
  • Badblocks shows an error while repairing my friends USB@Fabby. Could tell me to fix by using codes which can I repair from Bootable USB to Normal USB? Please – Madhusudhanan Aug 27 '15 at 02:41
  • This is not how this site works: My original answer is still valid, so please add the acceptance ☑ back. If you would have a [New question](http://askubuntu.com/questions/ask) you can always ping me in the chat room and I'll help you if I can. (I'm only a Vorlon: not a god; I don't know everything) – Fabby Aug 29 '15 at 21:53
  • @Fabby Surely I'll do, but accepting means the answer is valid. But it's not working for me Fabby, so please `Answer my question with an another answer ` Let the answer be there, I mean answered. May be it can work for others. So please Answer once a again. I don't like to dodge. Perhaps it might works for you, Don't Mistake me. – Madhusudhanan Aug 30 '15 at 03:11
  • Sorry, you must have misunderstood me: Clarifying my answer... Please read [the revision](http://askubuntu.com/posts/661173/revisions) – Fabby Aug 30 '15 at 10:07

2 Answers2

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It looks like your 4GB USB stick is broken. To ensure no one uses a destructive test and just copy-pastes the stuff without reading the explanation, you have to type the next command all in lower-case.

WARNING Never use the -w option on a device containing an existing file system. This option erases data! If you want to do write-mode testing on an existing file system, use the -n option instead. It is slower, but it will preserve your data.

So to be absolutely sure it's broken (or not) do a:

sudo BadBlocks -w -s -o /tmp/BadBlocks.log /dev/XdY

Where X and Y are s and b

If you get errors while executing the BadBlocks command: the USB stick is irreparably broken. Throw it away and buy a new one.

And if it would give you no errors, you're in luck: just re-format with gparted but create an msdos partition table first.

Sorry to be the very likely harbinger of bad news.

Fabby
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0

Open a terminal, sudo -i to become root.
Run fdisk or parted, delete all partitions, create a new one. Use the fat32 option for type.
Run mksfs -t fat32 /dev/sdb (assuming you haven't moved your USB).
Done.

If that doesn't work, consider providing details as suggested above. Sometimes cat /dev/zero >/dev/sdb will remove corrupted stuff from USB.

Ron
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Mark Williams
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