I have had a couple of problem usb sticks. One supplied free when I bought a couple so it looks like some one else has had the problem 2. I formatted them on a windoze lap top as it was handy at the time and thought I had used vfat but when plugged into a linux machine they show as unsupported format ???/NTFS, can’t remember the letters where the ??? marks are and don’t want to risk another. So formatted ext2 as suggested on a kde info site using volume lable for ID, user mountable and no mount on boot. It’s trashed the stick and what ever I do causes write protect errors to pop up even on windows. They are 65gb sticks. Also tried ext3 on another. Same result. I like volume label mounting as it tells me which one it is.
I wonder if anyone knows of a fix for this? It seems to be a fairly common problem but solutions are mixed and don’t seem to work.
I have had one thought having used the technology at a low level. I suspect 0 has been written to the wrong place in it. I assume it’s 0 as the erased state is usually $0FF however the logic in the stick might invert that when it comes out.
I wonder if it’s possible to forcible fill a portion of it with $0FF or 0 from the console. GParted is currently scanning it for files. Having formatted it btrfs it does sort of mount now but I get write protect errors still what ever else I try. I hoped btrfs format was a little incomplete and as it didn’t spot write protect looks like it is. I though that doing this might allow me to format to something else.
Whoops $0FF hex is 255