How to format the unallocated USB drive and make it as Fat32?

14.04 partitioning gparted usb-drive format

8,548

It looks like your 4GB USB stick is broken. To ensure no one uses a destructive test and just copy-pastes the stuff without reading the explanation, you have to type the next command all in lower-case.

WARNING Never use the -w option on a device containing an existing file system. This option erases data! If you want to do write-mode testing on an existing file system, use the -n option instead. It is slower, but it will preserve your data.

So to be absolutely sure it's broken (or not) do a:

sudo BadBlocks -w -s -o /tmp/BadBlocks.log /dev/XdY

Where X and Y are s and b

If you get errors while executing the BadBlocks command: the USB stick is irreparably broken. Throw it away and buy a new one.

And if it would give you no errors, you're in luck: just re-format with gparted but create an msdos partition table first.

Sorry to be the very likely harbinger of bad news.

8,548

Madhusudhanan

Nothing. A normal person just like everyone.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Madhusudhanan almost 2 years
I'm not able to format my USB as stated here and while following these steps :
```
sudo su
fdisk -l
df
umount /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1
```
my bootable USB was changed to Unallocated format and it's current status is:

lsusb |grep 4082:
```
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1976:4082 Chipsbrand Microelectronics (HK) Co., Ltd.
```
lsblk |grep sdb:
```
sdb      8:16   1   3.7G  0 disk
```
I have used Gparted, but was not able to fix it.

How should I proceed?
- Mark Williams almost 9 years
  
  Your link has quite a lot of ways to do that! Can you be a bit clearer about what you did / what went wrong (in particular error messages) please?
- Fabby almost 9 years
  
  @Sridhar: Why did you remove the acceptance? Anything wrong that I should know about?
- Madhusudhanan almost 9 years
  
  Badblocks shows an error while repairing my friends USB@Fabby. Could tell me to fix by using codes which can I repair from Bootable USB to Normal USB? Please
- Fabby almost 9 years
  
  This is not how this site works: My original answer is still valid, so please add the acceptance ☑ back. If you would have a New question you can always ping me in the chat room and I'll help you if I can. (I'm only a Vorlon: not a god; I don't know everything)
- Madhusudhanan almost 9 years
  
  @Fabby Surely I'll do, but accepting means the answer is valid. But it's not working for me Fabby, so please Answer my question with an another answer Let the answer be there, I mean answered. May be it can work for others. So please Answer once a again. I don't like to dodge. Perhaps it might works for you, Don't Mistake me.
- Fabby almost 9 years
  
  Sorry, you must have misunderstood me: Clarifying my answer... Please read the revision
Madhusudhanan almost 9 years

Can't able to fix it , a little more explanation is needed @Mark
Madhusudhanan almost 9 years

Let me try this and I'll do accordingly @Fabby
Madhusudhanan almost 9 years

It worked for me @Fabby