Have tried to use the stock instructions for flashing Tails, have used only devices that are not on their list of problem devices, both sticks and PCs, have used 3 different PCs, result is always the same. In one case Etcher actually bricked the dedicated SD Card slot of the laptop which was fun.
Cannot recommend enough to not use this for Tails. I am out $200 and a micro SD card port that I was very fond of.
Hey @etcherretcher, it’s unlikely that the drives are broken, merely they’ve been put into a temporary and reversible state by an incomplete flash. You should have success in restoring them using the “Recovering broken drives” section from the Etcher docs [1].
As the micro SD port, could you describe what diagnostics or symptoms indicate that it’s broken?
[1] https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/blob/master/docs/USER-DOCUMENTATION.md#recovering-broken-drives
Yes that’s the first thread I went to, tried everything there.
Ah, that’s more troubling. I wonder what could be happening with your drives?
If it’s not too much trouble, could you share:
clean the drive (as per the etcher recovery docs)This would help us to determine what’s going on here.
Additionally, the windows tool chkdsk might be able to turn up some useful information. [1]
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/chkdsk
I have two flash drives that were bricked today when I tried to use Etcher, granted not SSDs but the same principle. I downloaded Etcher from the Tails OS site and tried to flash Tails to a Lexar 16 Gb drive. The program gave me a popup declaring success, but it also showed as failed and File Explorer showed a drive without properties. I tried with another drive, a 32 Gb Verbatim, and got the same result. I tried the page listed at the top of this thread. Diskpart showed the drive at its actual 28 Gb, but when I ran Diskpart again after cleaning it showed “No media” and a size of zero, and File Explorer showed a USB drive with a generic icon and blank properties .
These were two never-used, never mistreated flash drives from reputable brands and suppliers.
Etcher-Portable 1.5.79, HP G-60 laptop running Windows 10 Pro.
Hi @Captain_Ahab,
Welcome to the balena forums! There a couple things you can try under Windows 10 that can help recover the drives.
In Windows, use diskpart, the command line utility tool that comes pre-installed in all modern Windows versions.
Open cmd.exe from either the list of all installed applications, or from the “Run…” dialog usually accessible by pressing Ctrl+X.
Type diskpart.exe and press “Enter”. You’ll be asked to provide administrator permissions, and a new prompt window will appear. The following commands should be run in the new window.
Run list disk to list the available drives. Take note of the number id that identifies the drive you want to clean.
Run select disk N, where N corresponds to the id from the previous step.
Run clean. This command will completely clean your drive by erasing any existent filesystem.
More details can be found here.
Let us know how you make out.
John
Thank you for a prompt response.
I had already followed the procedure you suggested - I found it on your site. It was frustratingly incomplete. I had to find the commands needed to reformat and assign the drives on another site. If I hadn’t I might have wastefully thrown them out.
Unfortunately, this experience leaves me little desire to try balenaEtcher again.
The march upcountry never ends.
@Captain_Ahab sorry for the frustration but I am glad you figured it out. We will try improve the documenation so that future users won’t need to scratch around for the commands needed.
Thank you for your response. If you find a solution to the bricking issue, I will come back for another look…
Hi there, I had a similar issue and found the only wait to fix it is to completely erase the partition table in Linux.
You can do this using GParted with some guidance from here: https://gparted.org/display-doc.php%3Fname%3Dhelp-manual#gparted-create-partition-table
Did anyone get any joy with this? I’ve just had the same thing. So been using Balena cloud for the Balena sound module, Using Etcher to flash directly from the site, always worked fine but now i can’t format the card at all, its 32gb card thats only showing 40mb and literally nothing listed in the advice here works i’ve tried every windows tool, 3rd part tools and nothing works. I can even go into the card, delete the files on there and then they just come back…any ideas?
Hi there,
I’m not sure if you managed to find a solution in the meantime, but usually one of these 3 fixes work https://thegeekpage.com/usb-drive-showing-wrong-size/ have you already tried them? I would recommend trying the second one, so that you can share the output of the disk list command.
If this does not work, it might be worth checking if there are any hidden partitions and erase them (you can follow this guide: https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-erase-a-hidden-hard-drive-partition)