Former USB boot drive no longer working as storage

[Daviddimo]

Hi Guys,

I have an old 16GB flash drive that I would like to convert back into a storage drive. It was used as a FreeNAS boot drive in a mirror. I plug it into a windows machine to convert it back to a storage drive but no such luck, windows kinda recognises it at first but then shut it out. The drive does not show up in my computer or in the manager. I know it still works as I can boot FreeNAS off it but no dice with converting it back.

Has anyone successfully done this before?

The main reason for all this is for some reason after changing my FreeNAS hardware config the mirror drive/set up does not want to work anymore so I figured I would revert it back to a storage drive and then re-initiate the mirror between the boot drive and the USB stick.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Just needs to be formatted

 

[Daviddimo]

Just needs to be formatted

Yeah, this is what I originally thought, I plug it into a computer to format it and no dice. It is very bizarre.

 

[Daviddimo]

I think I may just cut my losses and move on with my life haha...

 

[Constantin]

It may have to do with partitioning.

IIRC, this happened to me with some of my flash drives and Raspbian / RPi. I had to work at it to get the whole volume formatted since RPi seems to use a two-partition system? The latter was not readable on my windows machine but I was able to reformat / partition the whole stick in OSX. You may want to try downloading a specific partition program to do the same on Windows.

 

[Spiceman]

i used DISKPART in Windows command prompt window when i had to deal with this issue. I have done it enough times, youd think i would have it memorized...lol Google "wipe partions on thumb drive with DISKPART". Should find what you need

 

[SweetAndLow]

It's a limitation in windows I guess. You can look into for to use dd or gpart on freenas and wipe it that way. Just make sure you have the correct disk when running those cmds.

 

[Jailer]

From my notes:

If you have Windows 10, in the search area type CMD and then right click on Command Prompt and choose run as administrator.
Now, at the prompt, type the following and press Enter after each command:
diskpart
list disk
select disk x (where x is the number of your non-working drive – use the capacity to work out which one it is)
attributes disk clear readonly
clean

Additionally if you want to continue and format it using diskpart you can continue on and do what's listed below but I just use the disk manager to do it since it faster.

create partition primary
format fs=fat32 (you can swap fat32 for ntfs if you only need to use the drive with Windows computers)
exit
That's it. Your drive should now work as normal in File Explorer. If it doesn't, it's bad news and there's nothing more to be done.

 

[Daviddimo]

From my notes:

If you have Windows 10, in the search area type CMD and then right click on Command Prompt and choose run as administrator.
Now, at the prompt, type the following and press Enter after each command:
diskpart
list disk
select disk x (where x is the number of your non-working drive – use the capacity to work out which one it is)
attributes disk clear readonly
clean

Additionally if you want to continue and format it using diskpart you can continue on and do what's listed below but I just use the disk manager to do it since it faster.

create partition primary
format fs=fat32 (you can swap fat32 for ntfs if you only need to use the drive with Windows computers)
exit
That's it. Your drive should now work as normal in File Explorer. If it doesn't, it's bad news and there's nothing more to be done.

Hi Jailer, just gave that a try on two different computers and no go. Does not show up on when the command list disk is entered. Very odd. I think it may be a goner.

I have been thinking about transferring my FreeNas config on to a dedicated 2.5 SSD and have the other working thumb drive set up as a mirror just in case.

 

[Constantin]

It's good to have spares!

 

[Jailer]

Does not show up on when the command list disk is entered. Very odd. I think it may be a goner.

If it doesn't show up there then yes it's dead.