[22:31] <Alexion> Hello! I am using Lubuntu 22.04.1 LTS. I was writing a bootable live USB flash drive using MultiWriter and I got an error during the process. After that, the USB flash drive is not shown as a block device anymore and also fdisk doesn't show the device as /dev/sdb/. I'm not able to mount the device either. What can I do so I can use my USB flash drive again?
[22:38] <arraybolt3> Alexion: If it's not in lsblk anymore, that's flash drive failure.
[22:38] <arraybolt3> Flash drives eventually wear out after you use them too much, and when they do, they frequently die all at once.
[22:38] <arraybolt3> Flashing an ISO is a prime time for this to happen since you're writing quite a bit of data.
[22:39] <arraybolt3> Once that happens, the drive is dead and should be replaced.
[22:42] <Alexion> arraybolt3: I bought the drive just a few months ago and haven't used it much. Also the ISO was Tiny Core Linux, so very small ISO. When running lsblk, I can see sdb disk with 0 Bytes.
[22:42] <arraybolt3> Yeah, that's a classic sign of drive failure. What brand was it?
[22:43] <arraybolt3> Software is, in theory, unable to "break" a drie in this way due to a problem in the software. When drives behave like this, it is safe to assume that the problem is always with the drive.
[22:43] <arraybolt3> *drive, not drie
[22:44] <arraybolt3> (There is the possibility that the problem is with your motherboard too - perhaps it's feeding too much voltage into the drive or something, but that's very rare.)
[22:45] <Alexion> arraybolt3: it's written on it MediaRange, it's a 64GB flash drive
[22:46] <arraybolt3> I'm not familiar with that brand - it looks like a cheap off-brand, and cheap off-brand drives are infamous for doing this. It might even be a scam drive (where the drive reports more storage than it actually has but then fails in some way when you try to write beyond the storage it has).
[22:46] <arraybolt3> Generally, stick to well-known names like Sandisk, Lexar, PNY, etc. Sandisk is, from what I've heard, especially good.
[22:47] <arraybolt3> Sometimes cheap drives will work well, sometimes they'll fail early. More expensive ones can do that too, but cheap ones do it more frequently.
[22:51] <Alexion> arraybolt3: what is your opinion on Samsung flash drives?
[22:52] <arraybolt3> Samsung is a very trustworthy brand, on par with or possibly better than Sandisk.
[23:03] <Alexion> arraybolt3: besides Samsung and SanDisk, would you recommend me any other flash drive brands?
[23:04] <arraybolt3> I've had a good experience with Lexar, PNY, and Verbatim. Kingston is possibly good too, but from what I've read their less good than the others. Samsung and Sandisk are probably the best though.
[23:06] <Alexion> I see. What about ADATA ?
[23:06] <arraybolt3> Alexion: Note that this is just what I've gleaned from my research, I'd advise doing your own research too rather than taking a random stranger's word for it :P
[23:07] <arraybolt3> I've seen reports of ADATA drives dying early more often than normal.
[23:07] <Alexion> alright
[23:07] <arraybolt3> And I've personally had a TeamGroup drive die on me and an SSD of theirs be wonky, so I'd avoid them also.
[23:09] <arraybolt3> One thing I will warn, though, stay far far away from any brand that mimics the name of another one, those are almost certainly dangerous. (Things like SamData, which is obviously supposed to be confused with SanDisk.) And any drive that claims to have 1 TB of storage is almost certainly lying.
[23:09] <arraybolt3> *any flash drive, that is.
[23:12] <Alexion> I heard about a scam with an external SSD of 16TB
[23:16] <arraybolt3> Read about that one too. That's one reason to stay with well-known brands, in addition to the better reliability.
[23:20] <Alexion> arraybolt3: I agree with you, but those are also the most expensive ones
[23:22] <arraybolt3> Heh, true. The problem is that the reason the others are cheap is because they die easily. If you have to buy a new drive every three months or more, it will be more expensive than buying one good drive and having it work for a few years.