Can't format Ubuntu installation stick

I got this fixed by doing the following

1. On your unity dash, type gnome-disks and launch the Disks application

2. Select the disk or drive you want to format

3. Press CTRL+F

4. Click format.

After formatting, the disk or drive would be unallocated, therefore you'll have to create a partition by using the plus button on the screen. Then insert the name you'll like to use as the drive or disk name then click on create.

Make sure you have GParted installed. In a terminal window, run

sudo apt install gparted

Then open GParted as root (still in the terminal window):

sudo gparted

Select your USB stick from the GParted > Devices dropdown menu. Then click the "Device" tab > Create Partition Table...

This will erase all the data from the stick, so be sure you don't have anything valuable in it.

There will be an unallocated space left, double click it to create a new partition with your settings, such as disk label and filesystem (you'll probably want it to be NTFS).

Don't forget to apply your configuration by clicking the green "check" button in GParted.

You can use the terminal:

1. Find device ID:

df -h

2. Now unmount the device:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

(change sdb1 with your device id)

3.Format USB

Choose a file system:

Ext4

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

Fat

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1

Ntfs

sudo mkfs.ntfs /dev/sdb1

If the standard tools cannot restore the USB installer stick alias pendrive to a standard storage device, you can use mkusb-dus, which has a menu option to do it automatically,

• wipe the first megabyte and restore the drive to a standard storage device (with the MSDOS partition table and a partition with the FAT32 file system).

See these links

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb
• mkUSB-quick-start-manual.pdf
• mkUSB-quick-start-manual.pdf - alternate link

There is a more general description of what to do, if you have problems with a USB pendrive in the following link,

• Repair the partition table and file system of a pendrive

Check disk by issuing below command

sudo fdisk -l

You can find the usb disk, usually it would be /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc. Check if any of the partitions of the disk is not being used.

sudo df -h

If you find any of the disk partitions like /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1 then you need to unmount it first:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Now format the USB stick with desired file system like fat (general), ext4 (Linux) or ntfs (Windows):

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb
sudo mkfs.fat /dev/sdb

the @Eduardo Cola is solving the problem but after it I got:

The destination is read-only.

that was solved by:

sudo killall nautilus

I ran into this issue as well. I was able to get around it using sgdisk.

sudo sgdisk --zap-all /dev/sdd

I got the same error when I mistakenly selected Format Partition option (using the gear icon near the + sign). Then I found that the Format Disk option, which I needed to format the USB disk(!), was located (/hidden) under the (3 dots) menu, in the top right corner of the Disks (gnome-disks) window.

If you use a desktop version then the easiest way will be to go to the Disks tool.

• select your usb drive

• delete Ubuntu 16.04 Partition 2 clicking on minus (next to start/stop and config options)

  Try to format the usb now. If the error still exists, just plug it off and on again. Now you can format it without errors.

This happens to me every time I format my Ubuntu live USB back to FAT.

The solution worked for me:

Identify the device:

sudo fdisk -l

Re-write the device blocks:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=2048 count=32

Modify sdX with the appropriate device name.

Then run

gnome-disks

to format the USB flash.