I can't format my live-USB pendrive (udisks-error-quark, 11)

If you don't have any valuable data on that drive you can create a new partition table with Gnome Disks if it doesn't like the current one:

  1. Click on the cogwheel for drive operations and select “Format…”.

  2. Select a suitable partition table type and click on “Format…” again. For a USB flash drive you probably want “MBR/DOS” as the partition type like in the screenshot.

  3. Confirm that you want to overwrite the partition table and lose all data on the drive.

  4. Afterwards create a new partition and format it.

    1. Click on the button with the ✚ sign below the partition layout.

    2. Select

      • suitable partition boundaries (you probably want to cover the entire available space which is the default),
      • a file system (for a USB drive probably FAT, exFAT, or NTFS), and
      • optionally a name.

    3. Click on “Create”, wait a while for the file system creation to finish (can be in the range of minutes for a large but slow drive) and you’re done!


The best way to do is...

Open Terminal

sudo fdisk -l

This will list your all mounted/unmounted device..

Look for your USB device ... you can cross-verify it by from the Disk utility...It may list something like

/dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1...

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb --- if your USB is sdb

Command (m for help): d Partition number (1,2, default 2):

Partition 2 has been deleted.

Command (m for help): d Selected partition 1 has been deleted.

Command (m for help): w The partition table has been altered. Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table. Syncing disks.

That's it.

Now go back to Disk utility and then format the drive as you wish!...


I had this problem before and i fix it like this:

  1. install GParted and open it.
  2. from upper-right part select your USB Flash Memory.
  3. select your storage from list box and create a partition table (menu bar: device -> create partition table).
  4. create one or some partitions and format them by GParted or any other partition programs.

good luck