How to format a USB stick

Well, one could try zero'ing the raw block device to see if that can work. If you can write to that then you may be able to create a clean partition table, create a new partition and format that.

Suppose the USB stick is on /dev/sdc, first make sure /dev/sdc1 is unmounted:

umount /dev/sdc1

See if you can then clear the partition table, say by copying a bunch of zeros over the first few K

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=16

If that works, see if you can write zeros to the whole device without it failing. To easily see if the kernel can't write to the device, first clear the current kernel messages and throw them away using:

sudo dmesg -c > /dev/null

..then zero the entire device:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

..this will take a while. dd will complete when the raw block device is completely written to, or an error has occurred.

Then, check to see if the kernel has complained about the device, using:

dmesg

..if you see a load of error messages then you know that the USB stick is probably not in good condition.

However, if this works fine run fdisk or parted to create the partitions from clean, e.g. with fdisk I use:

sudo fdisk /dev/sdc
Command (m for help): n
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-7796735, default 2048): <return>
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-7796735, default 7796735): <return>
Command (m for help): t
Hex code (type L to list codes): 6
Command (m for help): w

..note just press return for the First and Last sector questions, fdisk will chose the correct defaults (which will be different to my example above). And then format the partition with VFAT:

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1

and then remove and re-insert the drive. It should be cleanly formatted.

You can simply format it using gparted. If that doesn't work, as documented here, you can :

1. Plug in your USB drive. Watch it appear on your desktop.
2. Choose System>Administration>Partition Editor (enter your password)
3. In Partition Editor, choose Gparted>Devices, and then the device that corresponds to your flash drive (which I determined by looking at the total size of the disks)
4. Unmount the drive: Select it in the list, then choose Partition>Unmount.
5. Choose Partition>Check. A window will pop up on the bottom saying that this one task is pending. BE SURE THAT NO OTHER TASKS ARE PENDING.
6. Click "Apply", and "Apply" again in the confirmation dialog window.
7. When Gparted is done with the check, it will re-mount the drive and open it in a new window.