Bricked USB installing LiveCD

Solution 1:

GUI Solution:

First and foremost make sure you have gparted and gksudoinstalled:

sudo apt-get install gparted gksu

Then start it with:

gksudo gparted

Now in the UI switch to your pen-drive via the selector, make sure it is your pen-drive because all what you do from now on will delete all on the selected drive.

Now click on the shown partition entry(s) and select unmount. After that select 'Create Partition Table ...' from the 'Device' menu and choose as partition type 'msdos'.

When that is finished it will show you an 'unallocated' entry for that pen-drive. Right click on it and choose new. In the following dialog choose the file system you want to have it (i.e. FAT, FAT32, ext1-4, this is up to you) and click on 'Add'. Then simply click on the green check-mark to apply your wishes and you're done

Solution 2:

If the USB never even shows up as a device, then it's fried. These USBs can die in one of two ways:

1. The memory card inside it (yes, might just be a micro SD) is EOL, or

2. The electronics in the USB reader dies.

   When you really give up on it, you can pull the USB apart carefully, and if it contains a micro SD, remove the card, put it into a reader and see if it is still usable. The small button "sticks" are more likely to contain a micro SD, not soldered to anything.