I used balenaetcher.io desktop program to flash my usb and it destroyed my usb

Hi,

If you click on the drop-down menu in the top right (it currently shows "/dev/sda (465.78), you should see other disks (and hopefully your USB drive).

John

I have already clicked that, no other disk is listed

Dear ersjan.
(For detailed instructions follow my post directly below this post.}

You have done well in your testing so far. You have done well to get GParted up and running to test your USB thumbdrive and see that it does not show up under sda as sdb.
Let me suggest a few things, and ask you a question too.
When you run Ubuntu is it running in a Virtual Machine under Windows, or is your computer set up to dual-boot Windows and Linux, and you have booted it to Linux?
I am always suspicious of Windows and I would make sure I had the computer booted under Linux only before I ran GParted. I know that Linux Mint (which is based on Ubuntu) installs GParted by default, but I don’t know if Ubuntu does too, so I don’t know if you are running GParted under Ubuntu.

Alternatively, download a copy of the GParted ISO (Google it for a download location) and burn it to a USB thumbdrive using Rufus. Don’t use Etcher. GParted does not need any more than about 500 MB so a USB drive as small as 1 GB will work if you have any small ones lying around. Then boot your computer from the GParted thumbdrive. When GParted is running insert your bad USB thumbdrive into a different USB port, Refresh the drive list (it’s in the GParted menu, I don’t remember where but it is there) then check again if your USB drive shows up as sdb (or something similar) in GParted.

Another thing to try is Fedora Media Writer (FMW) which a powerful USB - ISO burner that Fedora recommends for burning Fedora distributions onto USB drives. Go to the Fedora Linux site (Google it), and download Fedora Media Writer (FMW). It runs under Windows. When FMW is running plug in your bad USB drive and look for the option / utility for returning USBs to their “original factory” state. Give that a try and see if it fixes your USB drives.

My memory is a little hazy and I can’t remember if the FMW function that restores USB to factory state will recognise a USB in any condition or only after it has had a Fedora distribution ISO to it.

If it is the latter you will find out easily enough because you won’t be able to find the utility that does it. But if that is the case, use FMW to try to burn a copy of a Fedora distribution to your USB drive, and after it has done that then use FMW to restore the USB to factory condition. By the way - when FMW runs it looks on the internet and finds Fedora distributions that are available to write to your USB drive so you won’t need to go looking for one (unless you really want to).

If your USB drive is really scrambled, then FMW won’t be able to write a Fedora distribution ISO to it. But FMW is pretty powerful and if your USB is usable FMW should be able to write to it.

Just FYI. FMW is perfect for burning Fedora ISOs to USB thumbdrives that can be used to boot PC type computers in order to install Fedora Linux on to them. But when I tried to install Fedora Linux onto a Chromebook, the Chromebook would not recognise or boot from the USB drive that FMW had written. I then tried Etcher to write the Fedora ISO to my thumbdrive and the Chromebook booted it perfectly, even though the Fedora website recommends against it.

Also, I found that I could burn a Linux ISO onto an 8 GB SD card (that my wife had been using in her camera) and boot the Chromebook from the SD card. Some modern computers will boot from operating systems installed on SD cards, but they are a bit slow.

MORE DETAILED UPDATE:
I had a Sandisk 4 GB USB thumbdrive that was unreadable. Windows (Win 7 Pro) would not recognise it when I plugged it into my computer.
You will need to download and install Fedora Media Writer (for Windows) Google to find it.

My computer is dual-boot Windows 7 / Linux Mint. The Mint distribution, which is based on Ubuntu, includes GParted.

First, while running Windows I tried Fedora Media Writer (FMW) which writes ISO images to USB drives. At first FMW did not show an option to Restore the USB drive to its factory state, so I selected the option to write an image to the USB drive.

FMW tried to write an image but failed with an error after about a minute.

I closed FMW and restarted it. This time it showed an option to Restore the USB drive. I selected that and it seemed to complete but when I looked at the USB drive with Windows File Explorer it could not see the USB drive.

I tried FMW again to write an image to the USB drive but it failed again with an error. I used FMW again to Restore the USB drive, which it seemed to complete without error but Windows still could not see the USB drive.

I shut down the computer and booted it to Linux and ran GParted.

Plugged in the USB drive.

In GParted:

I clicked the drive selection dropdown box on the right side of the GParted window but GParted had not detected the USB drive.

In GParted I clicked Refresh (in the GParted menu) and waited until GParted had finished its scan for drives and partitions.

Clicked the drive selection box again and found that GParted had now recognised the USB drive. I selected the USB drive.

GParted showed one very small partition called Anaconda on the USB drive.

BEWARE. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE USB DRIVE SELECTED WHEN DELETING PARTITIONS. DO NOT DELETE ANY PARTITIONS ON YOUR HARD DRIVE. IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY DELETE A PARTITION ON YOUR HARD DRIVE YOU WILL BE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE.

I selected the Anaconda partition and deleted it. (The deletion will not happen until you click Apply, in GParted. Some versions of GParted just show a back arrow instead of Apply). If there are any other partitions delete them too.

BEWARE. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE USB DRIVE SELECTED WHEN DELETING PARTITIONS. DO NOT DELETE ANY PARTITIONS ON YOUR HARD DRIVE. IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY DELETE A PARTITION ON YOUR HARD DRIVE YOU WILL BE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE.

GParted now showed that all of the space on the USB drive was unallocated. Delete all partitions until all space is shown as unallocated.

Select the option to Create a New Partition Table. Select MSDOS as the Partiton Table type. Click Apply.

Select Create New Partition and create a new partition that fills the entire drive. Choose FAT32 for the format type, FAT would probably work too. Click Apply.

Exit GParted and shut down the computer. Unplug the USB drive

Turn the computer back on and boot to Windows.

Plug in the USB drive and check Windows File Explorer (not internet explorer).

The USB drive did not show up in File Explorer.

I ran Windows Computer Management > Disk Management. Computer Management could see the drive even though File Explorer could not, but Computer Management could not format it, so I knew something was still wrong.

I closed Computer Management and ran Fedora Media Writer again.

This time FMW immediately showed a box to click to Restore the drive to factory conditions. I selected that and suddenly Windows File Explorer could see the drive again.

I tried writing an image to the USB drive using Fedora Media Writer and it worked this time without error.

The USB drive was now functional again

It was a bit of trial and error but in the end it worked by using GParted to remove partitions, write a new Partition Table and Create a new FAT32 partition, then using Fedora Media Writer to Restore the drive to factory condition.

There might be a faster / better way of doing it but this worked for my Sandisk USB thumb drive that Windows would not recognise.

Please let me know if this works for you or if it does not work.

1 Like

I am having same problem. I have tried both windows and mac utilities to format the stick, no joy, so I created another USB drive out of curiosity, and now I have two Balenas USB drives that I can’t reclaim for other uses. What gives? Both drives work as EFI boot devices for the Mint Linux I was experimenting with.

Got the same issue while cloning a sd card to a USB SSD… Will try solutions provided by @jrmwalsh

Don’t know if this is still an active problem, but i had something similar happen when making a bootable drive for Zorin OS. Couldn’t open it, or do anything to it. I could only get it to work after using Rufus and setting the boot selection to “non-bootable” and running it. I do believe it showed up on Disk management and diskpart, so it may not apply to this, but its worth a shot anyways.

  1. Sometimes a USB drive that appears to be destroyed can simply be unrecognized by the computer. ( For more information visit it ) Check if the USB drive appears in the “Disk Management” tool on Windows or “Disk Utility” on macOS. If it does not appear, try plugging the USB drive into a different USB port or a different computer to see if it is recognized.

I think many people have been through this same thing.

First, I think I had an issue using this software from Windows to create a boot disk for Linux of one distro or another. I think those issues stopped after I dropped the disk size down to 16GB. I can’t confirm this for a FACT because it was years ago. The problem with using disks larger than that is they come formatted with FAT32, but FAT32 under Windows can’t be bigger than 16GB so I think you run into issues when the software is trying to make the partitions.

BTW, a company that makes USB drives larger than 16GB, which is every one of them, has to use a special software to get a drive larger than 16GB to take FAT32.

So, point 1, don’t use a USB disk larger than 16GB when putting a boot image on it. I just think it’s easier for the software to deal with.

Next, the USB drives are fine. The install might not have gone correctly but the disks are fine. Because you’re using Windows to create a bootable disk for Linux, those partitions as said probably aren’t visible to Windows. Windows can’t read different Linux partitions, so even if you go under Disk Management you won’t be able to see Linux partitions. So, this has a lot to do with the disk image and the partitions that were used to make the disk image. If they were partitions exclusive to Linux, Windows won’t show them.

I used Seagate Diskwizard to fix the USB disks under Windows if I remember correctly, but you should also be able to go to whatever disk tool you have in whatever version of Linux you’re using and fix it, So, don’t think the disk is corrupted or ruined. It just needs to get back to a state where Windows or Linux can see it all.