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How to remove iso 9660 from USB?

How to remove iso 9660 from USB?

I have somehow managed to write an iso 9660 image onto my USB drive, which makes all my computer think that the device is actually a CD. I have tried various methods of removing this partition, but nothing seems to work. I have tried fdisk, which says

Asked by: Guest | Views: 227
Total answers/comments: 5
bert [Entry]

"Okay, it turns out that in this case something (possibly when I wrote the iso-9660 file system to the drive) has triggered some form of internal write protection on the drive. There are no external write protection / hold switches, but yet this is the output in dmesg when I run

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

as root:

sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Write protected
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 4028744
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE,SUGGEST_OK
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Data Protect [current]
Info fld=0x0

Note the comments in there about protection! However, when I plug the device in, I get,

scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access FLASH Drive AU_USB20 8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB)
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB)
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

Note that this message says that the device is not write protected! So unfortunately, it looks like the disk has had it (i.e kaput)."
bert [Entry]

"mkdosfs -I /dev/sdb

will create a vfat file system on the drive. The -I has to be passed if you want the file system to be created on the entire drive and not on a partition. If you want to partition the drive first, use fdisk. Of course fdisk can't read the drive now, because it doesn't have any partitions. But I'm sure it will be able to write to it."
bert [Entry]

"I still feel that we are assuming something that's going to turn out to be untrue. Since the device is readable, this line will at least let you see the data for yourself, rather than depending on the other programs' interpretations.

dd if=/dev/sdb count=1 | xxd -g1 -u

Also, maybe we could separate problems with the dev node from problems with what's on the device, by forcing it onto another port. Either plug it into another USB jack, or plug another drive in first, to occupy sdb."
"I still feel that we are assuming something that's going to turn out to be untrue. Since the device is readable, this line will at least let you see the data for yourself, rather than depending on the other programs' interpretations.

dd if=/dev/sdb count=1 | xxd -g1 -u

Also, maybe we could separate problems with the dev node from problems with what's on the device, by forcing it onto another port. Either plug it into another USB jack, or plug another drive in first, to occupy sdb."
bert [Entry]

"Currently your USB drive got no partition table, iso9660 filesystem sits directly on whole disk (just like a cdrom)

sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: unknown partition table

I think you need make a partition first

sudo cfdisk /dev/sdb

(make sure it's not mounted before)
in the fdisk application create a new partition.

after that is done, make the filesystem on the new partition

sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1"
bert [Entry]

I had the exact same problem as you. However, I was able to find a solution from a surprising place. An old laptop with Windows 98SE on it, which is the last Windows system I ever owned. Anyway just put it in and when you try to access the drive Windows will ask you if you'd like to format it. Click yes and you'll have a fat16 formatted drive that's fully functional. I don't know if it works with newer versions of Windows though. Best of luck.