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This is a working pendrive. I can write on the main partition, delete from it. Everything possible can be done. Just can't format it. Formatting tools on OS other than Mac show format complete but nothing happens to the pendrive. MacOS show error which is given below.

I really need help. Even if you are not sure of the solution, please suggest something. I really need it.

I formatted a pendrive in macOS using disk utility (GUID, macOS extended journaled).

Then I copied macOS setup for hackintosh. Then I used clover(software to make macOS pendrive bootable) to mount the efi partition. It created a 200MB efi partition. Later I needed to format the drive to use it. On windows, disk management doesn't show the option to delete the efi partition. It shows option to delete the larger partition but even after clicking delete nothing happens. I read many articles on internet. I used diskpart as administrator and selected my disk and used clean command. It showed disk cleaned successfully but it lied. The disk is the same. With efi partition and the data on the main partition also there. I first tried macOS disk utility to erase the disk but it says failed to erase the disk. Under details, it says this operation requires partition unmounted -69830. I booted into my linux, used terminal df to list disks. Then unmounted the pendrive using umount. Then formatted using mkfs. All commands are sudo. Terminal showed cleaning disk, creating partition table etc. After it was over, I see again that the disk is unaffected. It's new pendrive. Worked fine. No problems with pendrive whatsoever.

I also tried third party softwares but they all do what diskpart in Windows and terminal in Linux did which is => showed formatting completed but actually nothing happened to the pendrive. Please help me format it.

Pera
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  • It's not impossible that faulty pendrive *pretends* that write operations succeed, then the OS (and its cache) believes this (to some point); but in reality the writes silently fail. You wrote "I can write on the main partition, delete from it". Please confirm the changes you make survive a reboot. – Kamil Maciorowski May 21 '20 at 13:08
  • Yes. You are absolutely right. I rebooted to check and the written file wasn't there. – Pera May 21 '20 at 13:15
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    That is a common failure mode of both SD cards and usb memory sticks. your already written data is still accessible, but new data cannot be written or persisted. Copy off what you need and replace it. – Mokubai May 21 '20 at 13:17
  • @harrymc I checked the link. The symptoms seem similar. As pointed out, the pendrive is faking the write operation. After rebooting or ejecting, the file isn't there. I formatted the pendrive with macOS extended Journaled format so I can't assign a letter to it in Windows. So the link which you gave has an option of check disk but it doesn't work as the pendrive show content only on macOS. – Pera May 21 '20 at 13:18
  • @Mokubai does it mean that now the storage device cant be used or repaired by any means. Is it gone forever? Can I only access the written data and nothing else can be done? Can you confirm before I order a new one. – Pera May 21 '20 at 13:21

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