Re: Repair bootable USB stick

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

dd brought your stick into this state. dd should get it out too.

  dd if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=2 of=/dev/sdc

should zap the MBR partition table and the GPT header block.
(Of course verify three times that /dev/sdc is the address of the stick
 before erasing its partition table.)

Then do

  hdparm -z /dev/sdc

or unplug and re-plug the USB stick.
A partition editor should afterwards perceive it as unpartitioned.


> I recently helped a friend install Mint on her computer, [...]
> I now have the problem that I can only format 3.9Gb of the drive.
> "Error deleting partition /dev/sdc1: Failed to read partition table on
> device '/dev/sdc/ (/dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label) (udisks-error-quark,
> 0)"

Mint 64bit ISOs have the same isohybrid layout as Debian amd64 ISOs.
I.e. MBR partition table with nested partitions and outer partition type 0
plus an invalid GPT.

It would be interesting to see whether a more conservative layout would
be more digestible to the partition editors offered by Debian.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas