Yesterday I made my flash drive Ubuntu bootable using Rufus. The operation of making it bootable was successful but when I ejected the flash drive from that computer it stopped working. It is not showing up in the Boot Menu or My Computer or Disk Management in any computer.  I can only see the flash drive in the Device Manager as Unknown USB Device(Device Descriptor Request Failed).  Is there any way to fix my flash drive?
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I have a USB flash drive which is no longer recognized by my computer. Windows Disk Management and DiskPart report No Media with no storage space (0 bytes) on the drive and I cannot partition or format the drive:     If the drive appears in Windows Explorer, trying to access it returns an error message indicating that there is no disk inserted, such as the following:     Please insert a disk into drive X:.   Various disk partitioning and data recovery utilities don't recognize the drive or only give a generic name for the drive and cannot access the contents of the drive.  What can I do? How do I recover data from the drive?     This question comes up often and the answers are usually the same. This post is meant to provide a definitive, canonical answer for this problem. Feel free to edit the answer to add additional details.
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How I can safely remove a USB external drive?  Ubuntu 12.10 does not come with this option, only to "Unmount" the disk, but not "Eject".    I have tried both USB sticks and with my external hard drive.
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I need to create a Windows installation USB drive from an ISO file. I used UNetbootin which seems to be the only tool that can write non-Linux images.  The USB disk boots (sort of), but it gets stuck at the very first stage. A UNetbootin splash screen appears that keeps counting down from 10 to 0, and then restarts.   The screen looks like this:    Is there a way to make Windows boot from a USB image created on Linux?
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So, I've spent the last day going through similar questions, and can confirm first that this is not a duplicate of:       With that out of the way: I've created an Ubuntu 14.04.03 Live USB Flash Drive (32GB) using UNetbootin, as well as the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator. In both cases, I was able to successfully deploy my Ubuntu ISO (). In both cases, persistence worked successfully (I had to manually enable it when using Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, but UNetBootin adds the -persistent kernel argument automatically to syslinux.cfg), no problems.  I need to have a persistence file larger than 4GB, as I'm creating a bunch of these flash drives for Field Application Engineers (FAEs), and they need to be able to use them on the road to diagnose installations for custom systems my company currently supports. It's fine if they burn out due to excessive write cycles, and each FAE gets a dozen of them if needed for each trip.  Also, we need to keep the first partition on the disk as a FAT partition in case the FAE needs to drop files onto the disk from Windows, Mac, Linux, etc, as Windows machines refuse to mount FAT partitions on a flash drive unless they are the first and only FAT partition on the disk.  I've tried the steps in the following articles:       The instructions were clear:   Create a Live USB flash drive with Ubuntu, leaving space for an extra partition. Delete the casper-rw loopback file on the first FAT partition on the flash drive. Use gparted to create an ext2/ext3/ext4 partition after the FAT partition, and give it a volume lable of casper-rw.   I followed all of the advised steps, but booting fails. When I attempt to boot from my newly-created flash drive, I am directed to a prompt instead of Ubuntu properly booting, .  dmar: IOMMU: failed to map dmar0 ACPI PCC probe failed.  BusyBox v1.12.1 (Ubuntu 1:21.0-1ubuntu1) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.  (initramfs) _   I've gone through the Ubuntu bug tracker, and it seems that this issue has been observed by numerous others:      And that it has been solved, so I should expect the fix to already be in my Ubuntu 14.04.03 image:      I've also tried updating my kernel boot parameters, by inserting LIVE-MEDIA=/dev/sdd1 (in my case) at boot time by hitting TAB, ie:  kernel /casper/vmlinuz.efi initrd=/casper/initrd.lz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper LIVE-MEDIA=/dev/sdd1 -- persistent   This time it at least finds the boot partition and starts attempting to boot the Live USB disk, but seems to fail along the way, with a bunch of "casper" related warnings. I can't seem to save those logs though, so I'm unable to provide them at this time. My current default kernel arguments are:  label ubnentry1 menu label ^Try Ubuntu without installing kernel /casper/vmlinuz.efi append initrd=/casper/initrd.lz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper  quiet splash -- persistent   How can I go about resolving this issue?  Thank you.
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I have a following problem: when I plug-in my USB flash drive, it isn't shown in Windows Explorer or recognized by system at all. In device properties, it is shown as:     USB MEMORY BAR     There's no partitions on the drive, so I can't format it:    DISKPART:     Virtual Disk Service error:   There is no media in the device.   HP USB format tool:     There is no media in the specified device.   Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thank You!
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A few weeks ago my chromebook got crazy and its OS got corrupted for an unknown reason. I'd like to instal Ubuntu 12.04 64bit on it using a bootable USB pendrive, but since it is not the usual installation that I am used to on PCs/laptops....I am a bit stuck and dont even know where to start. I'd simply like to make a pendrive that I can make bootable for my chromebook and do the installation.
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I opened up my flash drive this morning and all of my folders and files are normal, except for one folder and all its included files, which is the most important folder. The subfolders and files are renamed with bizarre characters and when I click to open them, a pop-up appears saying it's not accessible and the filename or directory name is incorrect. I don't want to reformat the flash drive because I'd lose all those files. Is there a way for me to restore it or something?  I would attach a screen shot, but apparently new users do not have that privilege. If you have a vague idea of what I'm talking about, let me know and I can email you screenshots so you can have a better understanding. Any help is greatly appreciated!
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I want to burn Ubuntu Minimal CD ISO to an old, 1 GB USB thumbdrive. Regular ISO doesn't fit. I already tried Startup Disk Creator and Unetbootin but both failed. I tried installing GRUB and pointing it to boot like this:  insmod part_msdos linux /linux initrd /initrd.gz   but it doesn't work. I also tried dd but I ended up with not bootable drive.  Rufus worked on Windows with the same thumbdrive but I no longer use Windows.  What else can I do?
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I have a SanDisk Cruzer 32gb flash drive that cannot be read only on a specific computer due to some unknown reason. Do note that all my other flash drives are working fine on this computer. Here's my situation... Background Info I recently bought a HP laptop. Before wiping the laptop's hard disk, I used HP recovery media creator to store the HP recovery image in my flash drive. After I was done with wiping my laptop's hard disk and making sure my clean installation of the operating system works, I wiped my flash drive with the standard Windows formatting utility. I don't like the OEM's recovery stuffs because of all the bloatware, but I backed it up to my flash drive just in case my clean installation fails. The Problem Now, this flash drive cannot be read on my main desktop (running Windows 8) anymore. However, the same flash drive can be read on my other two computers (also running Windows 8) perfectly fine. Observations:  The flash drive cannot be accessed in Windows Explorer or any Explorer alternatives. Received &quot;Windows can't access this disk&quot; error messages when trying to check the disk's filesystem. The flash drive's size cannot be viewed in My Computer.  Ironically, according to the Device Manager, the USB flash drive is detected and working fine. Things I've Tried  Uninstalling the USB mass storage driver and rebooting. Uninstalling all USB drivers and rebooting. Wiping and reformatting my flash drive on the computers that it can work on using MiniTool Partition Wizard. Using BootIce to rewrite the MBR of the flash drive. Copying the MBR of my other flash drives to the problem flash drive using BootIce. I've also tried formatting in FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS.  All of the above methods have failed. Does anyone know what's the problem, or have encountered such errors before? Please enlighten me. Your help is much appreciated. Thank you. =)
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I successfully followed instructions in   to make a bootable usb drive for ubuntu12.04 using the command 'gksudo usb-creator-gtk' in a terminal window - there were no error messages and the final pop message said I can now use the USB drive to successfully boot a system into the latest Ubuntu 12.04  However, on a brand new samsung laptop (NP-300E5Z-A0PIN - a i5 core machine), I get the following message: SYSLINUX 3.63 Debian-2008-07-15 EBIOS Copyright (c)1994-2008 H Peter Anvin Unknown keyword in configuration file Boot:  It hangs there...  Am I missing out any steps... how do I proceed with the installation... Many thanks in advance
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In an attempt to get a  I followed a suggestion to uninstall all devices of type Mass Storage using . Now, Windows 7 does not show any mass storage device, even the ones that worked previously. For example, a connected USB pen drive is listed in USBDeview as not connected:    In the Device Manager it appears with an exclamation mark:    It is not shown at all in Disk Managment.  I already tried reinstalling my  Intel chipset drivers, but to no avail.  How do I get USB mass storage to work again?
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I have a MicroSD card in a USB adapter (which plugs into a USB port on my machine, and acts like a USB flash drive). I was using Unetbootin to make this a bootable USB flash drive with Kubuntu. But I needed to cancel while it was working. So I killed the Unetbootin process from the console.  Since then, I can't format the MicroSD or delete the folder that Kubuntu made. I have also tried mkdosfs, with no success. I can't mount the drive anymore either? What can I do to make this drive usable again?  Trying to create a new partition table in GParted, as described in Eliah Kagan's answer, does not work. It fails with the error message "imposible crear tabla de particiones" ("unable to create a partition table").
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is a tool that let you install Grub on a USB flash drive. I really like it because it lets me boot from ISO files and let me put a bunch of ISOs on my USB and choose which one to boot.  The problem is, this is a Windows tool, and I don't know how to do it through the command lines. I would also like to know how to install Grub (2) this way, Grub Legacy seems to be easier...  EDIT: I'm not asking for a tool (and definitely not a Windows tool). I want to know the commands that I have to execute to have the same effects. I'm having Ubuntu in my mind right now, but if there is a general way that I can boot any ISO in the USB then that would be better.
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When I plug in my USB flash drive, it shows up on my computer as write-protected or read-only. I am unable to transfer data to it, nor can I modify or delete any files already stored on it. I also cannot repartition or reformat the drive using Windows Disk Management, DiskPart, GParted, or other tools. The drive does not have a write-protect switch.  Why did this happen and what can I do about it? Is there a way to remove the write protection?  (Note that this can happen with some memory cards, too, as they often use controllers similar to those used in flash drives. In some cases, the system may report that the drive or card was formatted successfully even though it was never actually formatted; the original data reappears when the device is reinserted.)     This question comes up often and the answers are usually the same. This post is meant to provide a definitive, canonical answer for this problem. Feel free to edit the answer to add additional details.
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I'd like to create a Windows bootable USB stick, but I don't have a Windows machine with me at the moment to do so. How could I achieve the same using Ubuntu?
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I have an older i386 Sony Vaio desktop PC where the BIOS only allows boot from floppy, CD or very specific USB device types, none of which seem to recognize USB flash drives for some reason. Floppy is not an option because the drive no longer works and I have no media for it if it did. I've tried assorted CD and DVD drives, the CD drives all give read errors and DVD drives all say "unsupported emulation".  My next possible option that I would like to try, is to install the hard drive into another machine as a second HD and figure out a way to format it and save an Ubuntu installation to run from that HD once it is moved back into the target machine. IS this possible and if so, how would I go about doing so? The currently running machine uses Windows XP.
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I have a blank USB flash drive I want to put a new filesystem on. If I try adding a new partition it complains "No partition table found on device /dev/sdc". Creating a msdos partition table seems to work correctly, except that when I go to add a new partition it complains with the same error. What am I missing?