USB drive erasing problem

[Firestrider]

I have a USB drive from ICC 2009 Germany IEEE Catalog No.: CFP09ICC-USB that has a read-only (can't copy or delete files from it) "partition" of CD-Drive icc2009.1500 using CDFS filesystem. How can I get rid of this "partition"?

I tried secure erasing it with DBAN using DoD standard and that did nothing.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[misterbk]

Not having much luck searching up that device. Is this a hard-disk type device (SSD or spinning platters hard drive of any size) or is it a flash-based thumbdrive?

Flash thumbdrive: Partition could be E3 software. Google "e3 removal tool".

Spinning hard disk or SSD: Do you have information on the disk you need? If not, you can use a Linux LiveCD to directly pipe zeroes to the disk, thus destroying the partition table and the read-only partition with it.

I do believe I've run into more polished tools for erasing these read-only partitions but I can't for the life of me remember what they were called. Those partitions are often dropped on the disk by an OEM who wants to keep their automated troubleshooting tools safe from end-user destruction. That might help the search somehow.

-- Brian

 

[Firestrider]

Its a flash thumbdrive and it doesn't have U3 on it. I tried using the U3 removal tool and it says that no U3 file system could be recognized.

Do you have the exact command to pipe 0s to the thumbdrive from a Linux LiveUSB?

 

[whs]

Since this is a Linux filetype, you may be better off dealing with it using a live Linux distro.

 

[MilesAhead]

Should be
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/drive bs=xx

where /dev/drive should be changed to match the mounted thumb drive
and bs=xx changed to match the block size of the thumb drive(e.g. bs=1M)

Just watch what you put for of= before you run it.

 

[misterbk]

Should be
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/drive bs=xx

where /dev/drive should be changed to match the mounted thumb drive
and bs=xx changed to match the block size of the thumb drive(e.g. bs=1M)

Just watch what you put for of= before you run it.

^-- What he said! That should erase the partition table entirely.

I want to provide some overly clear and specific instructions though, because you do have to be careful about finding out which device is which drive.

Run this command to list all of the drives on the system:
ls /dev |grep sd

Insert the offending USB drive at this point and run the line again:
ls /dev |grep sd

You will see more drives on the system. The ones that are new, and were not in the list the first time, are the thumbdrive. Depending how the drive is made there may be two partitions on one drive, or one partition each on two drives.

The "drives" on Linux will be lettered like this:

/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdc

The partitions on those drives will be lettered AND numbered like this:
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sdb1
/dev/sdc1


If you have one hard drive in your computer already (suggestion: unplug it for safety), it will probably look something like this:

1: Boot computer to Live CD
2: Open a command prompt or terminal (in the Accessories tab)
3: Become root for admin access to the system:

In the terminal window:

user@ubuntu:~# sudo su -
( password will be empty, just push enter )
root@ubuntu:~# ls /dev |grep sd
sda
sda1
sdb
sdb1
sdb2

4: Insert the thumbdrive and wait a sec. It will ask if you want to open it but don't.

root@ubuntu:~# ls /dev |grep sd
sda
sda1
sdb
sdb1
sdb2
sdc <--- Thumbdrive
sdc1 <--- Partition on the Thumbdrive
sdc2 <--- Second partition on the thumbdrive
sdd <--- Possibly a second thumbdrive device?
sdd1 <--- Partition on the second thumbdrive device

5: Write zeroes to the thumbdrive.

root@ubuntu:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc

If you see sdc, sdc1 and sdc2, the "raw write" will work. If you see sdc, sdc1, sdd, sdd1, it probably will not.

Don't write zeroes to /dev/sda unless you've unplugged your drive. That's your Windows OS!

 

[Firestrider]

Hey thanks for the replies guys,

I made a LiveUSB thumbdrive with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS RC and found out the offending thumbdrive is labeled /dev/sdd recognized as 1.7 GB with no partitions (e.g. sdd1, sdd2). I did the command "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd" and it said it performed the write over 1.7 GB.

But when I boot back into Windows it still shows that "CD-Drive icc2009.1500". Do you think this thing can never be erased?

 

[hubris]

Hey thanks for the replies guys,

I made a LiveUSB thumbdrive with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS RC and found out the offending thumbdrive is labeled /dev/sdd recognized as 1.7 GB with no partitions (e.g. sdd1, sdd2). I did the command "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd" and it said it performed the write over 1.7 GB.

But when I boot back into Windows it still shows that "CD-Drive icc2009.1500". Do you think this thing can never be erased?

Hi.
The system needs some space, eg; System Volume Information.

 

[misterbk]

Hey thanks for the replies guys,

I made a LiveUSB thumbdrive with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS RC and found out the offending thumbdrive is labeled /dev/sdd recognized as 1.7 GB with no partitions (e.g. sdd1, sdd2). I did the command "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd" and it said it performed the write over 1.7 GB.

But when I boot back into Windows it still shows that "CD-Drive icc2009.1500". Do you think this thing can never be erased?

Hi.
The system needs some space, eg; System Volume Information.

I don't think System Volume Information is what's going on. (Are you talking about the capacity lost to formatting?) The device is emulating a CD drive, showing two devices when inserted instead of one.

Firestrider, did only one device appear, and it was /dev/sdd? i.e. /dev/sdc was already present without the thumbdrive? (Not that it matters much I guess. If the thumbdrive is emulating the CD drive as part of its device architecture, either it can't be undone or you need a special tool that can talk to the proprietary thumbdrive gadgetry inside. Similar to U3 but a different brand maybe.)

Does the emulated CD drive have any contents? What's in there? If you can figure out what company's software was meant to run off the fake CD thing their site might have a solution.

OTOH, this may not be worth the time and effort... I take it this isn't exactly a brand new flash stick. You could probably replace it with something double the size for dirt cheap.

 

[Bill2]

Try formatting to FAT32 in windows.

Either run CMD as admin, then at the command prompt type:

format <drive letter>: /FS:FAT32

Or look for your drive letter in the Disk Management window, then right click and format.

 

[Firestrider]

Hey thanks for the replies guys,

I made a LiveUSB thumbdrive with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS RC and found out the offending thumbdrive is labeled /dev/sdd recognized as 1.7 GB with no partitions (e.g. sdd1, sdd2). I did the command "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd" and it said it performed the write over 1.7 GB.

But when I boot back into Windows it still shows that "CD-Drive icc2009.1500". Do you think this thing can never be erased?

Hi.
The system needs some space, eg; System Volume Information.

I don't think System Volume Information is what's going on. (Are you talking about the capacity lost to formatting?) The device is emulating a CD drive, showing two devices when inserted instead of one.

Firestrider, did only one device appear, and it was /dev/sdd? i.e. /dev/sdc was already present without the thumbdrive? (Not that it matters much I guess. If the thumbdrive is emulating the CD drive as part of its device architecture, either it can't be undone or you need a special tool that can talk to the proprietary thumbdrive gadgetry inside. Similar to U3 but a different brand maybe.)

Does the emulated CD drive have any contents? What's in there? If you can figure out what company's software was meant to run off the fake CD thing their site might have a solution.

OTOH, this may not be worth the time and effort... I take it this isn't exactly a brand new flash stick. You could probably replace it with something double the size for dirt cheap.

Yeah, the only device that showed up that was different when the thumbdrive was not plugged in was /dev/sdd.

So, the thumbdrive has some special firmware on it that makes the CD drive part permanent? I doubt this drive has some tool to remove the CD drive as they were given out for free at a conference with PDF whitepapers and such on them.

I just wanted if this drive could be wiped easily... but I guess not.

 

[misterbk]

Yeah it seems that way.

The CD emulated portion of the device probably showed up as /dev/cdrom1 or /dev/scd1 or something and that's why it didn't show up in the list.

Sorry you went through all the effort with the linux boot disk and all. I've run into hard drives that had "special" partitions that couldn't be deleted in Windows, but they were just partitions marked as "read only". Blasting zeroes at the partition table using Linux worked great for that, but this is something different.