The only ting I have done with this 1 TB usb drive is run etcher two times to try to make a bootable USB drive with file persistence for Kali (not in a row, I reformatted between attempts). Now, my USB is completely jacked.
I see in the included screenshot for your article that you too had a usb that said “no media.” That’s what mine is saying.
I have included some screenshots of the problems I’m facing and what happens. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Can confirm this is still an issue. I just lost a 16GB Kingston USB that I’ve only had for a year (rarely used) that I used to test the latest iteration of KDE Neon with Plasma 5.27. It’s never suffered any physical damage and has been used several times with other image writers (mostly Rufus) without problem. I moved my main rig to Mint and all of a sudden when I create the image with Etcher which I have used many times before on Win/Mac and my drive is reporting locked. I tried various methods to recover/restore the drive to no avail. Linux, MacOS, and Windows all see the drive locked and nothing has been able to fix the drive. The instructions in this article didn’t work. Spent hours researching and even used recovery tools in an effort to get it back into a working state without avail. It reports on Windows as being unreadable/RAW format. Mac won’t mount it with it being an unknown FS and Linux shows it as ISO9960.
I’ve already cut my losses since 16GB drives are dirt cheap nowadays but I’m not impressed with Balena’s response to this situation. I’m fine with troubleshooting but this whole article just reeks of lack of accountability. Almost every response I’ve seen from Balena is that it couldn’t possibly be their tool that caused this issue. Well, news flash, it was. Something about how it writes the image is tripping write protection on the drive and more/less bricking drives. Might want to look into that. Seems like people have been using a variety of brands to the same effect.
Ultimately I’m going to be moving to other solutions going forward. There’s some great image writers available on the Linux side that get the job done or can use the tried and true method with DD in terminal. Rufus is still awesome for Windows users. Hope you guys get it figured out since up to this point Etcher has been my go to outside of Windows.
We need these Blog posts to be built more like a decision tree. Every ‘solution’ that I have found on the internet get to a point where one of the steps gets an error message. (And most of those on forums are locked for age)
I bought a set of 5 (new) usb drives specifically to have boot installation media. I am 2 for 2 on needing to repair the file structure and format them after using the balena tool. I don’t need to rescue any data … if the drive is dead, fine. But if it isn’t, let’s get an instruction list that works. I am not any kind of expert, but they did not ‘wear’ out.
Thanks
DISKPART> clean
DiskPart has encountered an error: Access is denied.
See the System Event Log for more information.
DISKPART> convert gpt
DiskPart successfully converted the selected disk to GPT format.
DISKPART> create partition primary
DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.
DISKPART> format quick fs=ntfs
100 percent completed
DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.
This saved my day!
Same problem as “swifter” on a very little-used SanDisk 128GB USB drive.
I bought a set of 5 (new) usb drives specifically to have boot installation media. I am 2 for 2 on needing to repair the file structure and format them after using the balena tool. I don’t need to rescue any data … if the drive is dead, fine. But if it isn’t, let’s get an instruction list that works. I am not any kind of expert, but they did not ‘wear’ out..
Same thing here, this software broke my 128GB USB drive. Whoever is reading this, stay away! This software use to be good but no longer!
Yikes this has been going on for years?!?
So I followed the instructions in the main article, and I had a bunch of windows from microsoft windows pop up saying It wasn’t going to work and I needed to format through them. I ignored them and followed the instructions in the main article, and I have both of my USB’s back. Yay.
Now.
What I did that caused this in the first place, I was using Balena Etcher on a Lenovo Windows 11 computer to flash the image of linex mint (which I verified, downloaded via john hopkins and verified before flashing) onto my flash drive. I have done this before on a different computer using etcher and had no issues (that computer had windows 10).
The two usb sticks I was using were a lexar by micron, and a no name chinese stick I’ve had forever.
Both are now restored, and I’m going to go back in and try again with one of them.
Seems like some people are recommending Rufus? So I may try that, not sure.
Dear Balena Team, please fix this, it’s been going on way to long from the look of things. Could it be that windows 11 is nerfing your software somehow?
I’ll update this once I’m further along.
Round 2
USB stick one: I notice that Windows Command asks for permission to change the drive when I begin the balena etcher flash process. Denying this stops the program.
Etch completed
The USB no longer appears under drives.
Pulled stick out
Reinserted
“Microsoft Windows You need to format the disk in drive D before you can use it, do you want to format it?”
Format disk or cancel
hit cancel
Error box
“Location is not available”
D: is not accessable
The volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted"
When I look at the properties of the USB drive I find it now shows
Used space 0 bytes
Free space 0 bytes
I go to Optimize drives
this USB has been renamed and it now shows
"\?\Volume(07896644-3e61 -4841 -b41b-ca3f44823cce)
It says the type is a hard disk drive
“Current status optimization not available (file system type not supported”
Soooo. I’m not very good at this stuff which is why I’m putting this all up here so someone smarter can figure it out. However I have a theory.
My theory is essentially that Windows has nerfed the Balena software to prevent people switching to linex. Reading other forums etc. it seems that some people when this happens, if they plug the USB stick into a computer running Linex, than linex can read it no problem. When I do try to format it it says that it is write protected.
So for now I’m going to try using this article to fix my USB drive again.
The same thing happens as before when I get to the part where I type
“create partition primary”
Windows interjects and pops up the blank dialog and then a smaller dialog box that says
“You need to format the drive in D before you can use it.
Do you want to format it?”
Format disk or cancel
Ignore that entirely, use alt-tab to switch back to your command window, and then your Browser window with your instructions
continue with the instructions in the above article
I complete the instructions with out event and after
“format quick”
Just like that I have a working USB stick back again.
I think what’s happening is that when the etcher is used somehow it’s changing the format to something windows can’t read. Which leads to the belief that the drive is “bricked”
At least for me, that’s what has gone on.
…sigh…
Using the same usb that I repaired from the above comment, I downloaded rufus and flashed the ISO image with that. So far it seems to have worked.
I’m going to take a stab at Microsoft preventing Etcher.
I have used Etcher for some time on Windows 8.1 and have been successful every time on four different usb drive that are different sizes and all different manufacturers. Some usb2, some usb3.
Recently I was forced to update Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 because of an online games 3rd party security company’s restriction. They are tied to Microsoft. Anyway, that’s another story.
The point is, I have tried installing Tails via Etcher on the new Win10 OS desktop, Win10 laptop, Win7 laptop and all have failed.
All have reduced the usb sticks as non existant after etcher finished flashing.
All have been easily recoverable by use of CMD cleaning and formatting.
Tails is a program that can only be installed by use of Etcher as far as I can tell, and as is suggested by the Tails crew. It is an img file not ISO. So Rufus would not work. Or I am not experienced enough to get it to work.
I have been trying to get Etcher to work with the above mentioned OS’s over the past week but nothing at all helps.
I am going to re-install win 8.1 as soon as I can find some spare time to do so and then try again.
Its going to be VERY interesting if it works. Then I have to re-install Win10. Otherwise others in the household will be looking to lynch me. 
I’ll post the findings when I get it done.
Making an account literally to agree with all the above posters, it came up with a prompt during the verify stage and and then I could no longer access the USB. Also crashed my explorer and open apps at the same time. edit: rufus fixed the inaccessible issue just flashed with Ubuntu and easily fixed. Hello googlers!
@johnx did you follow the steps to recover your USB that we described here? Etcher broke my USB stick … or did it?
let us know if that works!
@TechDizzy thanks for sharing your experience. Did you try with more USB drives? Could you please confirm the Etcher version that you use? Is it possible that your USB drive could have any issue?
Let us know how do you flash Tails on the USB drive.
You can recover data from USB. Follow the step-by-step process
Hi mpous, I am not so good with forums and how to post to the right place. Please excuse me for that.
Had I tried more USB’s? No. Four or five was enough.
As for ‘How do i flash’. I have always followed the directions given through Tails website as Etcher is all they use.
I had used multiple different versions of Etcher after installing windows 10.
I have not as yet tried re-installing windows 8.1 as I just havn’t found an opportunity to do so. It is a shared pc.
But I will stress, I NEVER had any issue with any of the usb sticks or etcher prior to windows 10 home.
Which is why I blame Microsoft. I did try using ubuntu from a usb stick but am not entirely sure what I am doing there. And was also unsuccessful in getting etcher to flash Tails. It just came up with a white screen.
But I WILL post as soon as I can find a time to re-install my version of windows 8.1
Also just made an account to repond to this, dear balena just killed my usb, in diskpart its nowhere to be found(tried windows 10, 7)neither in Rufus, not even bios. It just bricked the usb. Great software, keep it up!
Well, It seems I won’t need to try Win 8.1. I got it to work on Win10 home. Somehow
As far as I can remember, I went into MS windows security, Virus and threat protection settings, turned off Real time protection, Cloud delivered protection and Automatic sample submission.
Then I re-did the install/flash and wahlah… it worked.
Perhaps I was lucky.
So now etcher works with the app I am flashing across all usb sticks.
The protections will all revert back to active after a short period.
Used balena to write Zorin OS Lite 16.2, stuffed up the USB. Reads as a Drive in file explorer that can’t be opened (please insert a disk), diskpart can’t clean (or format it), chkdsk can’t check it cause it’s raw, properties can’t do a check, doesn’t work on another computer I tried it on. Thought all hope was lost but someone in this thread said to use Rufus and that did, infact, work. Thanks for the software that don’t bloody work.
Same story, different day. I used Etcher to image HiveOS to a ~1.9TB Kingston SSD because it’s all I had at the time. Now the SSD reads at ~120GB no matter how I view it. Tried DISKPART in Windows, did the whole CLEAN thing, formatted it, gave it a drive letter, yadda yadda - still shows up as ~120GB. Just deployed a RHEL8 image to tried the DD method - still shows up as 120GB. Not matter what I do I CAN NOT see the other ~1.7 TB of unallocated space. It’s as if those sectors VANISHED after using Etcher. Is there something else I can try? This SSD cost me $200 
I found the solution for your problem
after selecting the disk run the following command “attribute disk clear readonly” then you can clean the disk and do your stuff again
