USB booting :: USB-stick has been eaten by linux pinguin  : (



I wanted to run linux from a usb stick (128mb) so that i could run my laptop witout a harddrive. But when i trew the live cd in it and runned linux and the usb-zip-pen thingie it failed. But the worst is linux can't use it anymore and i can't open or format it in windows either. I tried the fdisk en then mkdosfs but that doesnt work either because when i open it it doens't recongnize any partitions and can't create one either. I also tried the hp tool without suc6.

so i"m really sad now it was the only good stick i had and now its dead i don't care for the data. But it would be great if any lead linux pinguins know a solution to this puzzle. All help aprriciated.

Greetz sad linux noobie   :(
This is the second or third time I have seen someone reporting this. Maybe the software that is embedded on the USB pen drive is being overwritten somehow with certain drives. I don't see how that would happen, but anyting is possible...
tnx for ur reply atleast someone is reading my stuff .. but do you got any idea on fixin this ? or am i doomed to trow it away and hate linux forevver :p
Without actually seeing it...no.
I have installed to four different makes and sizes of pendrives lately, and without any problem, so I don't really know what might have happened to yours.
Does it have a LED that lights up when you plug it in and read data from it?
Try qparted.uci, maybe. Boot from the liveCD, then use myDSL to get qparted. That gives a little more feedback on the partitions.
i have seen various pieces of software rendering real harddisks unusable in a very similar way - the conditions for usb pendrives seem to be somewhat worse (i suspect the nonfixed chs mapping of pendrives).

you may try the following:

boot linux in any way. plug in your pendrive. overwrite the first physical sector (aka partition table) of the pendrive with zeros (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 <-- replace 'sda' with your correct device). try reformatting it under windoze.
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