On Sun, 27 Nov 2022 13:38:21 +0000 Schwibinger Michael <h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Topic: Problems with USB Sticks > > > Good Morning. > We have about 20 USB Sticks. But we have trouble with some. > I think we made mistakes. > The easy problem, one stick is only readable. How can we make ist > with Linux in terminal writable? If this is not possible, then how > can we make the stick clean and use for write and read? > > Bigger problem: > some sticks are not accepted by computer. > Some are lights up, but terminal is not recognizing them. > Others, there is no reaction bei putting in. > Are they totally destroyed? > > The first thing to try is, in a terminal: sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog (stop this listing using ctrl-C when you're finished) then look at the output when you plug in a stick. The messages will vary a bit, but you are basically looking for a) many lines of output b) that a USB device is recognised c: that it is allocated a drive designation e.g. sdd d) that any partitions are listed as e.g. sdd1, sdd2 etc. The first three items are essential for the stick to work. If they don't happen, something is broken. If the first two do not happen, the stick is probably permanently broken. There may not be any partitions on the stick, many sticks are formatted as one memory range, and do not even have a partition table. This should allow you to see which of your sticks are completely destroyed, and which may be recoverable. There have been USB sticks with a tiny read-only switch fitted, but I haven't seen one like that for many years. If not, your read-only device may have a filesystem too corrupt for the software to risk writing to. Also, Windows seems to be able to leave sticks in this state if they were not properly unmounted. If that is likely to have happened, it's possible that Windows can fix it without reformatting. Assuming a stick has been given a drive name, then fdisk should work on it, and should show the size, any partitions and other data. fsck should also work and show any filesystem corruption. fsck can probably fix some of these sticks, though there will have been data loss due to the corruption. If fsck shows errors but cannot fix them, it's time to reformat the device, and no data will be recoverable. Any stick which has been given a drive designation, and been formatted, and still doesn't work properly is probably broken beyond repair. -- Joe
