42
votes
Can't format my usb drive. I have already tried with mkdosfs and gparted
Analysis of the problem
Memory cards and USB pendrives have the same kind of hardware inside, so the same methods are relevant to both kinds of devices. The term 'drive' can refer to a USB pendrive ...
- 44k
36
votes
How to Fix "Read-only file system" error when I run something as sudo and try to make a folder/file?
This worked for me:
First, run this command with sudo permission:
sudo fsck -n -f
Then reboot the machine.
The options -f and -n are documented directly under man fsck, but under the filesystem-...
- 369
34
votes
how to format USB Flash Disk using Ubuntu terminal
First, you have to find out which device (/dev/sd??) your USB stick is. Therefore look at the output of
sudo fdisk -l
After that unmount the device/partition (if necessary) by running
sudo umount /...
- 459
23
votes
I can't format my live-USB pendrive (udisks-error-quark, 11)
If you don't have any valuable data on that drive you can create a new partition table with Gnome Disks if it doesn't like the current one:
Click on the cogwheel for drive operations and select “...
- 35.5k
22
votes
wipefs device or resource busy
Use the -f (force) option:
wipefs -af /dev/sdb
20
votes
How to know when formatting disk has finsihed - Ubuntu 16.04?
I had a similar situation where I right clicked a previously created partition on an external drive to reformat it. Once it had started there was no window of any sort to show the progress of the ...
- 413
17
votes
How do I identify the partitions of my hard drive in order to then shred them all?
Why not shred then entire device (important! choose the right device to shred!):
shred /dev/nvme0n1
... rather than
shred /dev/nvme0n1p1
- 2,498
16
votes
Accepted
Should you format your disk running Ubuntu?
There never was a reason to format a disk in Windows unless for re-installing the OS or another OS. Defragmentation yes but that was inside Windows. Regarding the comment: people tended to format to ...
- 289k
14
votes
Cannot format my SD card
It's very easy.
First insert your SD in Sdcard Reader, let Ubuntu mount it.
check the access path for the sd card using df
You will get some output like this
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used ...
- 407
14
votes
How to format Ubuntu bootable USB?
Neither of the two existing answers solved my problem.
I needed to go to the Disks app and hit Ctrl-F to get a prompt to actually format the USB drive.
Thanks to this answer.
- 321
13
votes
How do I completly delete Ubuntu 12.04 (only OS installed)?
Boot other distro/OS that you want to install on your desktop and when you're prompted to set up your partitions, delete all existing.
Now when you've deleted all partitions, create a new one for ...
- 326
13
votes
Format and partition second hard drive using terminal? (Ubuntu Server 14.04)
Solved
I used
fdisk -l
to show the partitions and then:
fdisk /dev/sdb
n
p
1
[enter]
[enter]
w
and then:
mkntfs /dev/sdb1
in that order to partition the drive. ...
- 181
13
votes
Accepted
Analogue of Ubuntu's Disks in Xubuntu?
You could use gparted. Install by opening a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and typing:
sudo apt-get install gparted
If you would insist on using the disk utility:
sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-...
- 88.1k
13
votes
wipefs device or resource busy
Unmount the disk and all the partitions on it:
sudo umount /dev/sdb*
Then retry the wipe.
13
votes
Ubuntu server 20.04 - time format 24 hours on shell with date command
The easiest way is to change LC_TIME variable to locale that uses desired time formatting. en_GB uses 24h clock for example. You can set it system-wide using localectl:
localectl set-locale LC_TIME="...
- 339
12
votes
Should you format your disk running Ubuntu?
I have a slightly different opinion.
Firstly, there were occasionally good reasons to reformat Windows. It slowed down if you installed things (including fonts). That wasn't fragmentation, it was ...
Oli♦
- 287k
11
votes
Unplugged USB stick while formatting - now not recognized any more
sudo apt-get install gparted
Launch GParted from the dash, switch to the usb stick, choose Device → Create Partition Table (accept the default setting), create a new partition.
- 5,500
11
votes
Format usb and confirm all zeros
I'll throw my hat into the ring here as well. One alternative that I love to use is scrub. It is in the repositories, so to install it from a terminal window type in:
sudo apt-get install scrub
...
- 38.7k
11
votes
I can't format my live-USB pendrive (udisks-error-quark, 11)
The best way to do is...
Open Terminal
sudo fdisk -l
This will list your all mounted/unmounted device..
Look for your USB device ... you can cross-verify it by from the Disk utility...It may list ...
- 210
10
votes
How to customize the font style in notify-send?
The issue might be that the summary string is not parsed, whereas the body string is parsed. The format should be notify-send <OPTIONS summary body>
You will notice in the code below the summary (...
- 201
10
votes
Accepted
Format usb and confirm all zeros
Apply dd, and tr for virtual inspection:
dd if=/dev/sdb | tr '\0' 0
Apply dd and grep for automatic checking:
dd if=/dev/sdb | grep -zq . && echo non zero
The above is significantly slower than ...
- 190k
10
votes
Accepted
How do I fix NTFS from Ubuntu?
You can try to use ntfsfix in order to repair the NTFS volume. This is a 'solution' in that it can fix simple errors such as the MFT and MFTMirror not matching up, and some minor filesystem ...
- 71.1k
9
votes
How to Fix "Read-only file system" error when I run something as sudo and try to make a folder/file?
If you are dual booting Windows with Ubuntu and you do not have any error in dmesg, then the problem could very well be caused by Windows.
In Windows go to Control Panel → Power Options and disable ...
- 101
9
votes
Bash create custom string
You can use brace expansion and printf:
printf "%s\t" ROW1 n{1..300}
The first string specifies the format of output to printf, and %s is replaced with a corresponding argument. Since there is only %...
- 190k
9
votes
Why unmount a partition before overwriting the disk?
umount un-mounts file systems.
This is needed here because it would be bad if you overwrote the partition while it is still mounted and possibly accessed by any application. You'd get errors.
See ...
- 104k
8
votes
Swap vanished after reboot
This is not happening in the reboot. After you finish your setup (running ecryptfs-setup-swap), go back to gparted and reload the table & open a terminal and run: sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda. You gonna ...
- 46.6k
8
votes
Cannot format my SD card
You can use the included Disks application
Click on the target partition. Now you can create new partitions, format the disk or change partition type.
- 730
8
votes
How to format a booteable usb made by Startup Disk Creator
Install mkusb
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mkusb
Run mkusb
and select restore to a standard storage device
- 103
7
votes
Thunderbird date format?
How to get YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM date format in Thunderbird 60
sudo ln -s /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_DK /usr/share/i18n/locales/root
echo 'root.UTF-8 UTF-8' | sudo tee -a /etc/locale.gen
sudo locale-gen
...
- 3,586
7
votes
Unable to format pen drive
It sounds like you may have a broken pendrive; go to a terminal and try these commands; ensure the pendrive is in fact /dev/sdc 1st though (use mount):
sudo -i
fdisk /dev/sdc
p # Lists the partitions
...
- 2,580
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible