I got downloaded and completed Integrity/Authenticity check, but I guess I'm going to have to buy another thumb drive cause the two I have can't even format them.
If I have an empty 250gb USB drive, can I burn the image to that to make it a bootable device? And then I guess if I had to boot from it I could change boot options to make sure it look at that drive.
Only thing I don't know is if before Windows disk manager loads if it even knows that drive is out there.
I did exactly that the other week to install a new distro on a thinkpad, when my usb stick turned sour. Not ideal, but I had no other option available. Shops closed and all that. However, take into account, modern bios systems can play a trick on you, when booting from a usb-HDD/SSD.
But in terms of your usb sticks: you are indicating you cannot format these. Are they being recognized? Meaning, do they indicate a drive number? Have you tried to use device manager? What does it tell you when you put the sticks in?
you could use diskpart from the commandline to restore your usb sticks after using this command: Get-PnpDevice
Message appears stating need to be formatted, click YES to format
Have tried but format as FAT32 and NTFS, fails.
I tried a while back going into Disk Manager to format. Same issue. Can't get around it.
It's possible that it messed up when I had it inserted into a client provided laptop that had BitLocker enforced on all drives. And now with stick inserted into different laptop, I have no RWX ability.
You could try and restore from superblock, later on, once you have linux running on live-cd or installed.
if live -cd, take careful note of the drivenumbers, so not to mix things up, because the live -cd is also sourced from a USB connection. The size usually gives it away.
On Linux CLI
<<<LSUSB>>
See if it is recognized correctly.
<<<lsblk>>>
Find the drive number. Usually something like sda/ sda1/sda2 or sdb/sdb1/sdb/2
<<<dumpe2fs /dev/sdX | grep superblock>>
Find the list of superblocks available. When the first does not work, try another.
Usually, you should see something like:
Primary superblock at 0, Group descriptors at 1-6
Backup superblock at 32768, Group descriptors at 32769-32774
Backup superblock at 98304, Group descriptors at 98305-98310
Backup superblock at 163840, Group descriptors at 163841-163846
<<<fsck -b superblock-number /dev/sdX>>>
If CLI asks to fix something, enter yes.
Once done, mount it
<<<mount /dev/sdX /mnt>>>
and go from there. sdX = drive you need restoring.
Try using ventoy, It's a fantastic piece of software
You can install it to anything, thumbdrives, external hard drives, internal hard drives, SSDs, HDDs, it don't mater
Just download the windows package, and launch the "Ventoy2Disk.exe", your 250GB drive, if plugged in, should show in the list, here's a quick guide from the website
After you install it you'll see 2 different devices for that same drive (it creates 2 partitions) one should be named "VTOYEFI" which is the actual application, you don't have to mess with it, the other should be named just "Ventoy"
This Ventoy device is basically just empty space you can use for whatever, and there should be a folder named "Isos" in there, if there isn't just create one, I honestly can't remember if it creates it automatically or not
Then just drop the isos for whatever you want to boot from in that folder, no need to burn them to the drive
That should make it bootable
you don't necessarily need to change boot options, the great majority of motherboards will have a "Boot menu" option at boot, these options show for a short time whenever you boot your pc right at the beginning, using this boot menu option you'll get a list of all the bootable devices from which you can choose, without changing the boot order.
Though if you have "fast/ultrafast boot" or the like enabled in your BIOS/EFI setup you'll need to change that
I got downloaded and completed Integrity/Authenticity check, but I guess I'm going to have to buy another thumb drive cause the two I have can't even format them.
If I have an empty 250gb USB drive, can I burn the image to that to make it a bootable device? And then I guess if I had to boot from it I could change boot options to make sure it look at that drive.
Only thing I don't know is if before Windows disk manager loads if it even knows that drive is out there.
I did exactly that the other week to install a new distro on a thinkpad, when my usb stick turned sour. Not ideal, but I had no other option available. Shops closed and all that. However, take into account, modern bios systems can play a trick on you, when booting from a usb-HDD/SSD.
But in terms of your usb sticks: you are indicating you cannot format these. Are they being recognized? Meaning, do they indicate a drive number? Have you tried to use device manager? What does it tell you when you put the sticks in?
you could use diskpart from the commandline to restore your usb sticks after using this command: Get-PnpDevice
or <<<Get-PnpDevice -PresentOnly | Where-Object { $_.InstanceId -match '^USB' } | Format-List>>>
However, if you were to install a linux distro via your usb-hdd/ssd, your options to get a usb working again, multiply.
Thanks for thoughful reply fren.
One 4GB Stick is recognized. Shows drive number.
I tried a while back going into Disk Manager to format. Same issue. Can't get around it.
It's possible that it messed up when I had it inserted into a client provided laptop that had BitLocker enforced on all drives. And now with stick inserted into different laptop, I have no RWX ability.
You could try and restore from superblock, later on, once you have linux running on live-cd or installed.
if live -cd, take careful note of the drivenumbers, so not to mix things up, because the live -cd is also sourced from a USB connection. The size usually gives it away.
On Linux CLI
<<<LSUSB>>
See if it is recognized correctly.
<<<lsblk>>>
Find the drive number. Usually something like sda/ sda1/sda2 or sdb/sdb1/sdb/2
<<<dumpe2fs /dev/sdX | grep superblock>>
Find the list of superblocks available. When the first does not work, try another. Usually, you should see something like:
<<<fsck -b superblock-number /dev/sdX>>>
If CLI asks to fix something, enter yes.
Once done, mount it <<<mount /dev/sdX /mnt>>>
and go from there. sdX = drive you need restoring.
Good luck!
Thanks.
Try using ventoy, It's a fantastic piece of software
You can install it to anything, thumbdrives, external hard drives, internal hard drives, SSDs, HDDs, it don't mater
Just download the windows package, and launch the "Ventoy2Disk.exe", your 250GB drive, if plugged in, should show in the list, here's a quick guide from the website
After you install it you'll see 2 different devices for that same drive (it creates 2 partitions) one should be named "VTOYEFI" which is the actual application, you don't have to mess with it, the other should be named just "Ventoy"
This Ventoy device is basically just empty space you can use for whatever, and there should be a folder named "Isos" in there, if there isn't just create one, I honestly can't remember if it creates it automatically or not
Then just drop the isos for whatever you want to boot from in that folder, no need to burn them to the drive
That should make it bootable
you don't necessarily need to change boot options, the great majority of motherboards will have a "Boot menu" option at boot, these options show for a short time whenever you boot your pc right at the beginning, using this boot menu option you'll get a list of all the bootable devices from which you can choose, without changing the boot order.
Though if you have "fast/ultrafast boot" or the like enabled in your BIOS/EFI setup you'll need to change that