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I have a 4.1 GB USB drive that has become unusable now. It previously had a Live version of Ubuntu 14.04 on it. I tried formatting it a couple of times through different techniques on GParted and the Disks Utility. None of them worked properly Gparted would tell me that a Partition Table was required. When I tried creating a partition table, it would give me a I/O error. When I tried the Discs utility, I would get a 'No Media Found' error.

I tried using the Ignore option on GParted tool.

Now whenever I start GParted, I get a error popup saying

Input/output error during read on /dev/sdc

The Window is titled "Libparted Bug Found!" sdc is the USB drive.

Screenshot after clicking on Ignore:

4 Answers 4

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Here is the easy answer:

  1. Open gparted
  2. Select the correct device in the menu Devices
  3. Go to DeviceCreate Partition Table
  4. Choose msdos
  5. If that fails, throw away the USB stick: It's broken. :-(
  6. Now format
  7. If that fails, throw away the USB stick: It's broken. :-(
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I got this hint from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2084152

Try one or both.

  1. Since I have an extended partition containing many logical partitions including swap and boot, I used a USB install of GParted to add the label "lba".

  2. I booted into Windows Vista and ran chkdsk /f twice. The first time showed a lot of errors / bad sectors but the second run was clean.

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I know this is not a ubuntu program however https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ is confirmed to be very good by most manufacturers and has gotten me out of situations sd card related. Also failing that you may want to do a low level format of the sd

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using sudo fdisk /dev/sdc

folow the help, using o option to create a new partition table

after that you can use Disk Utility or GPart to format you flashdisk

Alternative way:

sudo parted -a optimal /dev/sdc
mklabel msdos

If success, continue to use Disk Utilities Good luck!

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  • I get this (its on a different port now, hence sdb): ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
    – Ian
    Dec 2, 2014 at 14:11
  • instead of fdisk: sudo parted -a optimal /dev/sdc mklabel msdos If success, continue to use Disk Utilities Good luck! Dec 3, 2014 at 4:59

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