[SOLVED] Help fixing what I think is a corrupt memory stick/pendrive?

[data-angel]

I have a friend that gave me what I think is a corrupted one of those fake 2tb USB drives, I was trying to see if I could get it to work and find out what it's actual size and transfer were, I was trying to follow this guide here but fsck didn't do anything and attempting to zero it leaves the terminal hanging. I tried looking for USB testing software on linux like rmprep but was struggling to find any.

Could anyone recommend any programs/commands for me to try? Or determine if this drive is just lost?

[pbear]

Zeroing is about as low level as you can get. If that didn't work, I'd just toss it.

By the way, did you include status=progress in your command string? If not, you might want to try again:

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sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=1M status=progress

This will tell you whether anything is being written. If not, you've got a dead parrot on your hands.

[data-angel]

Thank you! I didn't realise that was a thing, it turns out it was actually doing something, but it got stuck here:

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30305943552 bytes (30 GB, 28 GiB) copied, 5021 s, 6.0 MB/s 

so i'm guessing that's the actual capacity, I tried killing it to go and make a new partition but it's not being detected at all anymore! Anything I can do now or did zeroing the drive finish it off? lol

[AndyMH]

Did you create a partition table first?

You could try putting a partition table on it with gparted, and if that works creating a partition (generally fat32 for sticks) less than 30GB.

[pbear]

... did zeroing the drive finish it off?

Nah, when the operation completes you're returned to the command prompt. That it wouldn't complete confirms there's something wrong with the device. Might as well try Andy's suggestion, but I'll be astonished if it works.

[antikythera]

Might as well try Andy's suggestion, but I'll be astonished if it works.

Me too, quite frankly dd can take hours to zero out a drive that size, if not days depending on the speed of the USB stick and the controller it's connected to. The last thing you should ever do is interrupt it.

Also, given how long it can take, is it really worth the effort versus binning it and getting a new one now? At the measured 6MB/s for a 2TB drive I'd say not.

I recently zero'd a USB 3.0 128GB thumb drive and had to leave that running overnight to finish.

[data-angel]

Did you create a partition table first?

Couldn't! I meant It just isn't recognised anymore after interrupting it when it hung on the terminal, sorry!

dd can take hours to zero out a drive that size, if not days depending on the speed of the USB stick and the controller it's connected to.

Yeah it did take a few hours to get to where it was before hanging haha

Also, given how long it can take, is it really worth the effort versus binning it and getting a new one now? At the measured 6MB/s for a 2TB drive I'd say not

I'm pretty certain it's not actually 2TB haha, one of those fake chinese memory sticks, not really desperate for a new one enough to pay for it but would be handy to have just a spare to do whatever with

Also the speed listed there is just what it got stuck on, It still wasn't fast but was in normal USB2 range and degraded to that point before hanging.

But yeah, if it got stuck like that, and it's no longer registering as a device (keeps my laptop from booting when it's plugged in too actually lol) I guess there's no chance recovering it?

[antikythera]

No, just bin it

[data-angel]

Ah, shame, ok tho, thanks everyone!