How to recover a usb which was made bootable using dd tool

Question

I was trying to create a Kali installation suite on my 16 GB sandisk pendrive. I used the dd command and umount to mount the iso into my USB. After the installation is complete I formated my pendrive and now it shows it has only 10 GB of usable space. How to format it properly so that i can use the entire space?

Solution

You need to remove the image of the install disk completely. Run the following series of commands:

sudo fdisk /dev/sd_ # Insert drive letter as appropriate
    p         # This will list partitions on it. CHECK it's the pendrive!
    d         # Delete partition (repeat until all deleted).
    p         # If you still have partitions, run d again
    n         # Create a new partition. Physical, accept defaults for size etc
    t         # Change type - use option b (vfat). Consider c (bigger USB sticks).
    w         # Write out changes & quit fdisk

sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sd_1

Comments

[Admin]

did you tried deleting all the partitions on it ? also can you edit and show it from GParted

[Admin]

use NTFS partition type if you want to be able to store a file above 4GB