recover usb stick

[hcvv]

The image shows that it says "..., because it is opened read-only".
You said "It states that the drive is mounted read-only."

Please do not post your own conclusions/fantasy, but only what the computer says.

==========================

When there is nothing on that device you want to save (but only then), the best thing is to erase the first block. As root:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdN count=1

(replace the N with the correct letter, check that twice! or you may destroy the contents of the wrong disk).

When this gives an error, please post (and then not your conclusion, but the copied/pasted text from the terminal including the line with the prompt and the command, up to and including the line with the new prompt) between CODE tags (you get the CODE tags by clicking on the button with the # in the toolbar at the top of the post editor).

When this gives writing problems (read-only or otherwise) then your device is broken.

When that succeeds, then use the partitioner of your choice to make a partitioning of your choice and put file system of your choice on those partitions.

[dcurtisfra]

Before this, an error message says the GPT is corrupt.

Please be aware that, the filesystems supported by any given Kernel are located in ‘/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/fs/’.

• “modprobe «filesystem name»” to load the driver into the running Kernel.

To initialise a storage medium before reformatting it –

• “dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sd? iflag=fullblock bs=1024 count=10 status=progress”

In other words, overwrite whatever partition table was present – in this case the first MB of blocks on the given device.

• You can also use “dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd? iflag=fullblock bs=1024 count=10 status=progress” to overwrite the first MB with zeros.

It possible that, the USB device has a capacity of around about 2 GB –

• Therefore, it doesn't need exFAT – simple FAT is OK for devices with a capacity of up to and including 32 GB.

---

Extra information for exFAT –

• You'll need to add “exfat” to the file ‘/etc/filesystems’ to allow “mount” to auto-magically recognise the filesystem and, remember to re-edit that file every time the package “util-linux” changes …
• It's also not a bad idea to execute “modprobe exfat” …

[Svyatko]

In a similar situation in the past, I was able to use "gdisk". The expert menu includes an option to zap the GPT partition table.

GParted and KDE Partition Manager can do this too.

[Prexy]

Please be aware that, the filesystems supported by any given Kernel are located in ‘/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/fs/’.

• “modprobe «filesystem name»” to load the driver into the running Kernel.

To initialise a storage medium before reformatting it –

• “dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sd? iflag=fullblock bs=1024 count=10 status=progress”

In other words, overwrite whatever partition table was present – in this case the first MB of blocks on the given device.

• You can also use “dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd? iflag=fullblock bs=1024 count=10 status=progress” to overwrite the first MB with zeros.

It possible that, the USB device has a capacity of around about 2 GB –

• Therefore, it doesn't need exFAT – simple FAT is OK for devices with a capacity of up to and including 32 GB.

---

Extra information for exFAT –

• You'll need to add “exfat” to the file ‘/etc/filesystems’ to allow “mount” to auto-magically recognise the filesystem and, remember to re-edit that file every time the package “util-linux” changes …
• It's also not a bad idea to execute “modprobe exfat” …

I used the second command to initialize the disk. Next, I formatted with a single FAT partition. Prior to doing this, Dolphin didn't see it; but it showed up in lsusb and lsblk. After formatting, it could now be seen by Dolphin but would not mount. After a short time, this error appeared

An error occurred while accessing '252.5 MiB Removable Media', the system responded: An unspecified error has occurred: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

So apparently, as hvcc says: it is broken.

Thanks to all for helping me with this.