Gorilla thumb drive is being a beast

[Tom_ZeCat]

I have a 16 GB Gorilla thumb drive named Writing that all of a sudden is having fits, demanding bananas and throwing its poop at me. Well, not literally, but it's suddenly decided it's a read only drive. I tried to save a file to it from LibreOffice earlier today, but it refused to take it. I tried numerous commands to make the thing writable, including unmounting and then mounting with the rw option. I tried formatting it in Gparted, but it's read only status makes even that not work. A couple screen shots:




I tried this:

sudo chmod 775 /dev/sdb1

No dice.

I also tried:

sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1

And got this:

[sudo] password for tom: 
fsck.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
Logical sector size is zero.
tom@tom-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$

The stubborn thing still refuses to let me copy files to it. I don't have a female Gorilla drive to withhold sex from it until it complies, something I'm sure would work, so I need to find some way to fix this in the terminal or with some GUI utility. The good news is it's completely backed up to another thumb drive and on my internal hard drive. It's no problem if I need to wipe this in the process.

It's an exFAT drive. It also refused to be formatted in Windows 7. In Kubuntu I've used numerous attempts with dosfsck to no avail. I've also tried Krusader as root and going in to change the permissions. I'm hitting a brick wall. Anyone have any other ideas other than smashing the thing with a sledge hammer? Because that's what I'm about ready to do.

Bad Gorilla, bad!


Edit: One more thing -- I noticed a read greyed-out file named .sync.ffs_db on the drive. This may be the dirty work of FreeFileSync. I got mad at that application and said mean things to it, so I think it may have taken offense talked the Gorilla drive into helping it get revenge against me.

[jlittle]

If you're very, very sure it's /dev/sdb, you could try

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=16M count=1024

Note that if you get the sdb wrong, you might hose your system. Be very sure. Note that's the device sdb, not the partition sdb1.

Now, if that works you'd then partition it with gparted. If not, there's a hardware issue, try another.

Regards, John Little

[Tom_ZeCat]

If you're very, very sure it's /dev/sdb, you could try

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=16M count=1024

Note that if you get the sdb wrong, you might hose your system. Be very sure. Note that's the device sdb, not the partition sdb1.

Now, if that works you'd then partition it with gparted. If not, there's a hardware issue, try another.

Regards, John Little

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked it up in Gparted to make certain it's /dev/sdb and then tried. It still refuses to cooperate. Here's what I got:

tom@tom-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=16M count=1024
[sudo] password for tom: 
dd: failed to open ‘/dev/sdb’: Read-only file system
tom@tom-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$

Edit: The sledge hammer option is looking more and more attractive. I figured I would try using the Diskpart command on my Windows 7 PC. As soon as I plug it into the USB port, I get a BSOD. Mind you, not as soon as I got the the command line and tried Diskpart -- BSOD as soon as the @#$%ing thing was plugged into the USB port. Now Windows won't even start. I'm doing a Startup Repair.

[Qqmike]

I would have said as jlittle did: dd, then GParted. How about just trying GParted, make a new master boot record (either MBR or GPT), then reformat it FAT32 or something? See if that works to make it readable. If so, you might be good to go (ahead with it); and then--if you wish--zero it out with dd, then go back to GParted and set it up again (MBR and FAT32 or whatever).

[Snowhog]

These drives have a two year warranty. Concider contacting Customer Support at customer_support@epmemory.com

[Tom_ZeCat]

I would have said as jlittle did: dd, then GParted. How about just trying GParted, make a new master boot record (either MBR or GPT), then reformat it FAT32 or something? See if that works to make it readable. If so, you might be good to go (ahead with it); and then--if you wish--zero it out with dd, then go back to GParted and set it up again (MBR and FAT32 or whatever).

Already tried wiping the partition and then formatting it in Gparted. You can see the results in my screen shot. It refuses to format. I've tried FAT32, NTFS, and even ext4. No luck with anything.

[Tom_ZeCat]

These drives have a two year warranty. Concider contacting Customer Support at customer_support@epmemory.com

That's about what it's coming down to. I think this thing is a hardware issue, especially the fact that it immediately crashes my Windows PC.

[Qqmike]

Already tried wiping the partition and then formatting it in Gparted. You can see the results in my screen shot.

Yes, I see, of course! Sorry, not thinking here. Snowhog's suggestion seems right-on, and ask those guys WTH gives apart from the replacement issue.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Yes, I see, of course! Sorry, not thinking here. Snowhog's suggestion seems right-on, and ask those guys WTH gives apart from the replacement issue.

Yes. This is the first time I've ever had any problems with a Gorilla drive. They're designed like a tank.

Wow, the Startup Repair on my Windows 7 PC didn't even work. I'm going to have to restore my Acronis ghost image.