Corrupt Live USB Drive
I have a 16GB Kingston USB Drive that I have been using to run Trisquel on multiple computers, and I have been using it for a while. Today I was running a program when the OS froze. I couldn't use any shortcuts or click anything. So I decided to take the bad route and I turned my computer off.
When I booted back up it was a standard Trisquel install but with no taskbar. The background was also plain blue. I looked for some of my files but they were all corrupt and wouldn't open. Not much was loss so I decided to boot back up from CD so I could install the OS on the USB again.
I erased the disk using Startup Disk Creator and then installed the OS on the USB drive.
I booted back up from the USB drive but when I got past the loading screen I got a black terminal screen with a recurring error. It was happening very fast so I couldn't read it, but I could tell it was the same error happening over and over.
I booted back up from the CD again. This time I tried to erase the drive again, but I got some errors. The first few times I tried it, it acted as if it was erased but didn't display how much free space. After trying a few more times, I got the error:
org.freedesktop.UDisks.Error.Failed: Error creating file system: helper exited with exit code 1: helper failed with:
mkfs.vfat: failed whilst writing FAT
mkfs.vfat 3.0.12 (29 Oct 2011)
Then I tried again and got:
org.freedesktop.UDisks.Error.Failed: Error creating partition: helper exited with exit code 1: In part_add_partition: device_file=/dev/sdb, start=0, size=15479597056, type=0x0c
Entering MS-DOS parser (offset=0, size=15479597056)
No MSDOS_MAGIC found
Exiting MS-DOS parser
Entering Apple parser
No MAC_MAGIC found
Leaving Apple parser
No known partition table found
unknown partition table format and flags is not empty
I am afraid that I might have permanently corrupted my USB Drive (if that is possible). If anyone can identify the problem and how/if I can fix it, that would help me a whole ton. Thanks
I tried erasing the disk yet again, but got a different error:
org.freedesktop.UDisks.Error.Failed: Error creating partition table: timeout (10s) waiting for change
I tried again after this and got the same error again.
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I'm fairly certain that your flash drive is dead. Flash memory, sadly, has a limited number of writes. I assume when you made the disk the filesystem was ext3 or ext4. These filesystems have journaling enabled. The files are constantly written and moved around the drive, thus killing a flash drive faster.
Looks like I'll be using the live CD for other computers now, until I get a new flash drive.
I was aware that USB flash drives had a limited amount of writes, but I didn't realize that I was anywhere close to reaching that. I guess I did.
Thanks for the info.
Sorry, posted to wrong thread, ignore me. How did I manage to do that I don't know.
Accidentally replied because I didn't see the edit on e-mail.
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USB flash drives and flash in general has its problems. I don't think its actually the # of writes that is the problem though. I would avoid unplugging USB flash devices without first dismounting them and maybe even not without completely turning the machine off. Then make sure the electricity is completely gone from the machine. The problem has something to do with flash and the loss of power causing problems. It won't happen with at least some high end SSD drives because they have proper circuity to deal with the problem. However most SSD / USB flash drives (probably any) have this circuitry.