Etcher not recognizing my usb drive

balenaEtcher
1

Hello. I am brand new to your product. Here is my dilemma. I installed your product on Linux, specifically Chrome OS. I am trying to flash an ISO onto a USB drive. But Balena is not recognizing the USB. It does not show the USB drive to me when I click on select target. It shows /dev/vdb, /dev/vda/ and /dev/pmem0. But it does not let me pick the USB drive. I obviously do not want to use any of these three locations, or else it would wipe the hard disk on my chrome book. I need to pick the USB drive, but it does not appear on the target list. Very frustrating

The flash drive I have shared from Chrome to Linux. I have given it an explicit name - in my case, Cinammon. (I am trying to flash the Cinammon ISO onto this drive.) I have tried formatting the USB with the 3 different choices - fat32, ntfs and exfat - none of those choices had any impact.

So at this point, I am at a loss. Is this just a case of my unfamiliarity with this new tool? Sorry, I really do not want to take chances with wiping my hard disk. Please explain how to get the USB device to appear on the target list, or I can’t use this product. Thank you.

2

One other point: I can actually see the USB drive mounted on the system. I can see Cinammon in the /mnt/chromeos/removable directory. So…why can Etcher see it? Sorry, please help me with this. Thank you.

3

So, is what I am trying even possible on Chrome? I have access to a Windows laptop; should I simply switch to that and try this? Thanks.

4

I installed Etcher on a Windows PC. I was able to get it to recognize the USB drive properly. So it is definitely not an issue with the drive.

6

Timothy, you are 100% correct. Etcher is not supported on ChromeOS. Only Windows, Mac, or native Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/CentOS, etc.). I do realize ChromeOS is a derivative, but unfortunately as you discovered, it doesn’t work properly. Glad to hear you got it resolved in the end though. :slight_smile: