USB pen drive no longer recognized

Support
1

Hi,
I tried to use Timeshift to create a backup no a 64GB USB.
It took ages to do that. When checked it after 10h or so Timeshift said that the backup was created.

Now USB is not recognized anywhere. It’s like dead.

How can I restore it?

With USB in:

[jesuslinux@T2310 ~]$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0 74,5G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0 35,7G  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0 35,8G  0 part /
└─sda4   8:4    0    3G  0 part 
sdb      8:16   1    0B  0 disk 
sr0     11:0    1 1024M  0 rom

With no USB in:

[jesuslinux@T2310 ~]$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0 74,5G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0 35,7G  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0 35,8G  0 part /
└─sda4   8:4    0    3G  0 part 
sdb      8:16   1    0B  0 disk 
sr0     11:0    1 1024M  0 rom

Moderator edit: Please edit your first post instead of replying to yourself

3

How about

df -h
sudo fdisk -l

And I suppose most importantly … does Timeshift recognize it?

4 
[jesuslinux@T2310 ~]$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
dev             1,5G     0  1,5G   0% /dev
run             1,5G  1,3M  1,5G   1% /run
/dev/sda2        35G   14G   20G  42% /
tmpfs           1,5G   36M  1,5G   3% /dev/shm
tmpfs           1,5G  5,4M  1,5G   1% /tmp
tmpfs           298M   72K  298M   1% /run/user/1000

USB plug in does not show.

[jesuslinux@T2310 ~]$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for jesuslinux: 
Disk /dev/sda: 74,53 GiB, 80026361856 bytes, 156301488 sectors
Disk model: TOSHIBA MK8037GS
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x723b9227

Device     Boot     Start       End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1            2048  74966891 74964844 35,7G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2  *     74967040 150005759 75038720 35,8G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4       150005760 156296383  6290624    3G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

When I plug USB on Win10 laptop it makes that warning sound.
USB show there but can’t access it. Disk Management does not show drive.

Timeshift does not show USB

5

If the USB drive isn’t shown, what’s sdb?

That 0B doesn’t look good, if it’s your USB drive then I’d try making a new partition table using gparted.

How old is the drive? Maybe it just died. :man_shrugging:

6

It is probably dead. It is a bad idea to use timeshift, therefore rsync, on flash drive which has limited write cycles. And you know 10h of writing constantly to a flash stick can overheat it as well.

Run

sudo dmesg --follow-new

and plugin the stick. What does it say?

1 Like
7

Ran your command and the inserted USB:

[jesuslinux@T2310 ~]$ sudo dmesg --follow-new
[sudo] password for jesuslinux: 
[13692.554238] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 9 using ehci-pci
[13692.701289] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1e3d, idProduct=198a, bcdDevice= 1.00
[13692.701308] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
[13692.701902] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[13692.702377] scsi host5: usb-storage 2-1:1.0
[13693.711714] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ChipsBnk Flash Disk       5.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[13693.714681] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Media removed, stopped polling
[13693.715930] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

Ran the command again and remove the USB:

[jesuslinux@T2310 ~]$ sudo dmesg --follow-new
[sudo] password for jesuslinux: 
[14150.355867] usb 2-1: USB disconnect, device number 9

So it’s detected…so why can I access it and format?

8

USB pen does not show on Gparted.
That’s the first thing I tried.
The USB is new 2 weeks tops.
Haven’t written anything on it…just formatted to ext4.

USB is shown with command lsblk but not with fdisk -l

9

After that, it should usually attach and determine the capabilities of the device, but didn’t. That makes me think that the flash drive reaches its limit. There is not much to investigate.

10

So it’s dead then?