Gddrescue for USB - How to recover?

I’ve followed your guide to make a mate USB installation disks. ( https://ubuntu-mate.org/how-to-create-bootable-usb-drive/ ). However, the USB become read-only and I need to find a Microsoft machine to recover it for other use.

I’ve searched through the Internet and tried gnome-disk-utility, fdisks,… but still cannot work out a solution in linux on my own.

How can I do this in Mate?

Thanks.

PS. Would you please post a solution for recovering the USB in a step by step manner on your web page, following the paragraphs of the ddrescue page, is preferred so that I can go there and copy and paste in future every time I do the installation.

Hi @Arthur_Cheung,

you do know that the instructions you were following are for RaspberryPi don’t you?, I ask because you posted your help request in the normal help & support section. :confused:

If you want a normal Ubuntu installation USB stick then please take a look here:

To clean the USB stick first; use Gparted:

Aiya!!! It is very handy so I do this to my thumb!!!:scream::dizzy_face:

Thank you for your information.

FYI, the method of making USB installation disk by your ddrescue guide is very good, except the trouble of recovering the thumb.

I’ve made many linux machines by using this.

Hi,

I have to ask you again, is it for Raspi though?. :smiley:

Sorry that I overlooked this is for Pie only when I come across this page.

I am using the USB for installing linux on PCs. I was using ubuntu startup disk creator as well as unetboot but both sometimes fails, warning me the USB is read-only, especially when I need to test new releases.

When I came across this page, I found that ddrescue a linux live image into a USB is the best method in terms of reliability and versatility. It needs no attention during writing. It never fails. It works even in a “read-only” USB. This is very good on testing new releases on bare metal.

Since then, I had never came back to neither starup disk creator nor unetboot again.

hi Arthur,

did you fully format the USB stick before you started using ddrescue?. :smiley:

For recovering the USB in windows, I delete all partitions and perform quick format.

In linux, I just use ddrescue to overwrite different sisters without recovering them in between.

Hi Arthur,

maybe you should try pre-formatting your disks before using ddrescue just to be on the safe side!. :thumbsup: