Hi there
I am a linux noob. I took a 16gb usb and flashed the arch official iso using etcher (BEFORE I DISCOVERED MANJARO). As a noob I couldn't install Arch so i turned to manjaro, used a different USB and installed Manjaro on my PCs hard drive. Now the old usb stick with the arch iso doesn't work with windows and isn't getting dectected in my manjaro machine too. I tried formatting it with windows diskpart but that didn't work. Whenever i used the "clean command" it says error access denied.
Pls help me out i wanna be able to use that USB
You'd best try another USB and see if you get the same issue - it's likely to be a hardware issue IMO. I never met a USB that won't format or deny me access...
use gparted
the usb was completely fine before i flashed the iso
and is there a way to restore it
Can I get little detailed instruction on how to do that I am a noob
press 'Alt+Space' and type 'gparted' to launch it.
Enter password.
Click the dropdown '/dev/sda/ ' to find your device... or gparted menu>devices.
If it's mounted, you'll see the directory. There are options for data recovery.
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thank you
BTW the process has started but how long does it take for a 16GB USB stick usually. Its taking quite a while now
That all depends on the stick and the system.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX
where X is the drive you wish to obliterate...
This will wipe out your second hard disk and every bit is written with zero.
Experience tells me that if you do LOW LEVEL sorting of a hard disk, it's best to leave it overnight and maybe then some... for 16GB still much quicker than just removing partitions and stuff - but it will revive it if it works.
I generally use Testdisk for this kind of thing, but dd sounds like a fundamentally more basic tool. Lovley and simple if you learn the use of it.
Yes i did use the same command just with a status
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb status=progress oflag=sync
but its taking quite a while. Is it something i should worry about or is it fine and completely normal
Go make a pot of tea and watch TV for a while. Nothing goes fast when you're sitting watching it 
Yea I guess you're right okay
BTW thanks for helping. I'm really glad you helped me out
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I find zeroing out the partition tables is usually sufficient to fix up a drive that won't take a format. Wiping only the sectors at the start of the drive is usually enough to get the drive working and is much faster. It also doesn't put extra wear on the drive like writing every sector (which is very time consuming on a large drive) .
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=2048 count=32
Where "X" must be replaced in the above command with your actual drive letter.
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And... BTW, please stop posting dd commands using actual drive designations like:
of=/dev/sdb
Only post drive designations like I did below:
Please do not post destructive commands as above with designations such as /dev/sdb. Newbies read these posts and all they do is copy and paste into a terminal. Then BAM, they just wiped a 4TB drive of all its data. The dd command is very destructive and the average newbie finding these commands is like leaving a hand grenade at a kids playground.
Please edit your posts and replace sdb with sdX, so that there are no Newbies accidentally blowing up unintended drives with a copy/paste.
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Thanks everybody for helping me out
I was able to use my usb using gparted after the dd command
so for anyone searching this after months here's the summary
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=2048 count=32
Replace X with your disk
- Install Gparted
pacman -S gparted gpart nilfs-utils jfsutils ntfsprogs reiserfsprogs xfsprogs
- install polkit-gnome to make gparted able to run directly from menu.
pacman -S polkit-gnome
- Now you can use it for whatever you want. It's similar to windows disk management
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Thank you, and my apologies - edited already
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