[Bug 996188] Re: Gparted Hosed my USB Thumb Drive

[Cefn]

Fair criticism, Phillip.

Because I feel confident with these tools, I was just stating the
configuration dictated through GParted (and asserting I was using the
correct steps). However, without explaining the steps, you're not to
know that I'm informed and doing the right thing, and I'm not helping
you by leaving out the detail.

For reference, the exact same steps on a different model of thumb drive
of the same size worked perfectly to create appropriate filesystems.

On the problem memory stick, I did indeed successfully create a new
partition table after zeroing the disk, and then went through a sequence
of adding new partitions one by one, (one 128Mb swap, followed by the
remainder of the 1GB disk as ext3) and the behaviour I'm confused by is
to see GParted accept my request to create and then to format that ext3
partition, but every time, after apparently reporting success and
forcing a reload of the view, the thumb drive shows the partition as
'unknown' rather than showing it as ext3. I'll keep experimenting and
report back with more detailed steps and feedback when I can articulate
the problem better.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/996188

Title:
  Gparted Hosed my USB Thumb Drive

Status in “gparted” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Just a note, not an accusation. I thought I'd repurpose a 1Gb thumb
  drive (which I got free with the Economist magazine) to act as a
  filesystem for an NSLU2 (an Arm computer which can run a cut-down
  Debian). Before beginning on this job, the thumb drive had a
  functioning FAT32 filesystem on it which I was able to read and write
  to.

  I proceeded to create various partitions on it (or try to). By the end
  of the attempt, and after trying to fix the bugs I was encountering by
  trying to do the same with FDisk, I have a Thumb drive which I can't
  create a filesystem on at all. Each time I try to do this, GParted
  reloads the drive and identifies the target partition as Unknown.

  Finally I tried to return it to factory configuration - a single
  monolithic FAT32 partition, and it seems I now have a totally dead USB
  stick. Writing /dev/zero across the whole stick as /dev/sdb didn't
  seem to help either, though I thought that might reset it.

  I thought these things were just a series of bytes stored in memory,
  and everything else was filesystem metadata conventions. Maybe it
  decided to give up at exactly the moment I fired up GParted, but that
  would be weird.

  Any ideas what happened? Can I get it back?

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: gparted 0.8.1-1ubuntu4
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-19.33-generic-pae 3.0.27
  Uname: Linux 3.0.0-19-generic-pae i686
  ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Mon May  7 21:55:55 2012
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release i386 (20111012)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: gparted
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2012-04-04 (33 days ago)

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