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I have purchased a 4Gb USB key from Verbatim.

How can I use it under Ubuntu? I do not need the "secure data" feature, and have still not saved anything on it, so formatting at low level would be OK.

However, I was not able to do it, although I tried several things.

Some details: The Key comes with a windows-only application which (under Windows) forces you to set a (non empty) password before the first use. Then , every time you insert the key, it asks for the password to grant access. The key actually has two partitions, the smaller one (41Mb) containing the auto-executable software and doc, and the bigger one (the actual storage space) being initially empty.

In Ubuntu, I can only see the small partition with ls or a file manager.

However, "ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*" outputs:

/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Verbatim_Secure_Data_USB_070007013AA6EDB2DE98-0:0 -> ../../sdb
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Verbatim_Secure_Data_USB_070007013AA6EDB2DE98-0:1 -> ../../sr1

Surprisingly, "sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdb" says:

/dev/sdb: No medium found

and "sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sr1" says:

mkfs.vfat: unable to open /dev/sr1: Read-only file system

Indeed, /dev/sr1 is marked brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11 ... which could explain why the system is read-only!

Finally, I do not see any of the two partitions in gparted or with "sudo fdisk -l"

Thanks for your help!

Bernoot

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  • Still a problem with "Verbatim Secure Pro" drives in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS; same symptoms. Unfortunately, Verbatim's encryption technology is not based on U3 (like SanDisk's), and thus the u3-tool package that can be found in Ubuntu's repositories can not be used to remove the encryption and format the drive. Access via wine (64-bit) failed as well.
    – LUser
    2 days ago

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