BalenaEtcher destroyed 3 new USB drives

balenaEtcher
28

Hi,

Etcher version 1.18.4
Windows 10 Home 22H2 OS version: 19045.2788

Destroyed three USB drives (two new ones, one used) before a googled and found this post.

From the event log when inserting the detroyed USB:
Device USB\VID_2101&PID_8500\5&11fbb66f&0&2 was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match.

Same error message from all three USB devices. (Closed the etcher and can’t find anything under AppData/etcher… that can be useful)

I tried again after disabling Windows Security ransomware protection, and the flash succeeded.

Kind regards
Peter Eriksson

29

You can try this step:

  1. Go to rufus website, if the diskpart method doesn’t work.
  2. Download the software, just follow the step as usual.
  3. You will see your pendrive listed, select the pendrive.
  4. Select the iso, and just press Yes as the prompt come.
  5. You will see a new drive is assigned to your pendrive and there after. Let the process been completed, and then just use your pendrive as usual.
30

I was able to recover both of my USB Thumb drives by using diskpart through CMD in windows 10.

There is a lot of videos on how to use it but this is what I did:

In a CMD window type “diskpart”

DISKPART> list drive

DISKPART> select disk (#) value of the disk you want to repair, Look for the GB

…you can use the command “DISKPART> detail disk” anytime

DISKPART> clean

DISKPART> create partition primary

I was able to format the drive in windows

31

Oh my god same! My usb drive broke after using Etcher…I’ve flashed it many times with rufus and it still working, but not with etcher in this case bc my usb has light on it so if it’s connected it will light up and blink and when I connected to my laptop it just lights up, no blink and no pop up on windows, it popped up on BIOS but with different name “ChipFish BlnkDisk” iirc. It wasn’t detected in any device I tried.

I threw my usb away and will get a new and I will never touch this faulty app again.
Seriously fix your app, developers!

1 Like
32

I solved this problem by installing a program in windows called “mini tool partition wizard free” and resetting completely the USB drive by recompiling his sectors with 0 or 1 (there’s an option called like that when you reset it),it worked for me and restored the usb drive.
Hope may help by figure it out

33

Note: In the following, the # in the sample commands is the terminal prompt. Yours may be different. Don’t type that.
And the [n] is a number that depends on your configuration. Type the appropriate number not literal [n].

I found this somewhere, but now can’t figure out where, but this worked just fine in a Mac. Just be really, really careful, since this could easily trash your system.

First, you need to be sure which disk you’re fixing. So with the disk not installed, type:

# diskutil list

That will give a list of details of each current disk, as /dev/disk0, /dev/disk1, etc.
In my experience, /dev/disk0 is an internal recovery disk and /dev/disk1 is your internal drive. You may have others.

Then insert your broken USB drive and run

# diskutil list

again. Your usb drive should now appear as an additional /dev/disk[n].

Now you’re going to zap that new /dev/disk[n]. Be very careful here. I take no responsibility if you end up killing your system, but this worked for me. The command is:

# diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 UNTITLED MBRFormat /dev/disk[n]
(Where [n] is the drive you’re recovering. And UNTITLED is just a name for the recovered disk.)
# diskutil list
And that should show your USB drive as now an actual drive, and you can then use the standard Mac DiskUtils app to reformat the drive as you want.

34

Hey, so for anyone this might help: I am on a Mac (iMac M4 desktop), and I was able to pull my 500gb mini SD card out of this “corrupted” state by using a program called SD Card Formatter. Every other way I have personally tried (such as Disk Utility, using Windows, using other programs on Windows, etc.) claimed the card was locked and unreadable. Luckily this program came in clutch and saved my memory card.

Windows and Mac OS compatible, but I only tried on Mac:
[SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows/Mac | SD Association]

35

Mainly this software’s job is to destroy USBs and SD cards.

1 Like