Formatted USB now shows as a disk drive [duplicate]

About a year back i bought a USB from Asda that of which the manufacture is unknown. i made it a bootable USB for kali linux and done the install to a separate USB. i decide to format it as i could use it for other things, so i use admin EaseUS to wipe it, while later it fails so i unplug it an plug it back in. Next thing i know i try to open it in files and it says "Please insert disk" ive had a look in disk management it comes up as:

"

Disk 1 Removable (E:)

No media

"

disk management screenshot

By this point i don't know what do do so... can u guys help?

1

3 Answers

Your problem may be caused by the lack of a partition, which can happen when your USB was used to boot and then wiped.

The diskpart command in Windows command prompt can be used to create a partition. The following guide was taken from:

(v=ws.11).aspx

Note this method works equally well to create a bootable USB:

1. Insert a USB flash drive into a running computer
2. Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator.
3. Type diskpart
4. In the new command line window that opens, to determine the USB flash drive number or drive letter, at the command prompt, type list disk, and then click ENTER. The list disk command displays all the disks on the computer. Note the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive
5. At the command prompt, type select disk X, where X is the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive, and then click ENTER.
6. Type clean, and the click ENTER. This command deletes all data from the USB flash drive.
7. To create a new primary partition on the USB flash drive, type create part pri, and then click ENTER
8. To select the partition that you just created, type select part 1, and then click ENTER.
9. To format the partition, type format fs=ntfs quick, and then click ENTER.
10. Type active, and then click ENTER.
11. Type exit, and then click ENTER.

6

You say you used the disk to boot a Kali Linux installer, but you don't say how you prepared that installer. This is a critical detail, since some methods (such as using dd to write the .iso file directly to the USB drive) create a sort of Frankenstein's Monster of disk formats that's likely to create problems in the future if it's not properly erased. Going on the assumption (which may well be incorrect) that this is what's happened, the trick is to completely wipe those bogus data structures. A couple ways to do this in Linux are:

• sgdisk -- Type sgdisk -Z /dev/sdc (changing /dev/sdc to whatever the proper device identifier is). This uses sgdisk's ability to erase all the GPT data structures, which will also wipe enough of anything else that the disk should become much less confusing to other tools.
• dd -- You can completely wipe the disk with dd, as in dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc. (Again, change /dev/sdc as appropriate.) This operation will take several minutes to complete, but it does a very thorough job -- every sector will end up containing nothing but "0" values. You may be able to get away with wiping just the first few sectors by adding bs=512 count=100 to the dd command. This will do the job much more quickly, but it will be less thorough and so you might still have problems.

In either case, the disk will be left in an unpartitioned state when done, so you'll need to create a filesystem on the disk, and perhaps re-partition it. You can use a tool like GParted in Linux or EaseUS in Windows to do both operations at once, or do them separately with smaller Linux tools -- use parted, gdisk, or fdisk to partition and then use mkfs to create a filesystem on the partition. Creating a "raw" filesystem on the whole disk without first partitioning it is reasonable for some use cases; Windows ignores everything but the first partition on USB flash drives, so there's not much point to creating partitions if the disk will be used exclusively from Windows.

If wiping the disk in this way doesn't help, then it could be that it's failed or was defective from the start (despite the fact that you used it successfully for a while). Some cheap "generic" USB drives are configured to look like they're bigger than they are. They work for a while when you store just a few files on them, but when you try to use their full capacity, they flake out and may become completely useless. It could be you've hit that wall with your drive. If so, consider this a lesson on caveat emptor. Likewise, even good USB drives eventually fail. If yours is older (or if it's new but defective or low in quality) it may have hit this point.

2

i have come to the conclusion that the disk is dead as i have gotten nowhere and no app can detect it (except for files) thanks though for the help, i do appreciate it