I pulled a pendrive out of our Humax Freesat box, rolled my eyes as usual at the remove safely error popup.
Plugged it into laptop (Ubuntu) though, heard the usual noise as if it had been recognised but it isn't visible in files.
Gparted doesn't seem to see it.
Smartmon says "Read device identity failed".
Is it knackered?
Could be, but more likely just corrupted. You can find low-level format tools that may make it useable again. I used one a few years ago after a stick became unuseable following using it for loading a bootloader and firmware onto a satellite box.
The software that wrote the bootloader installation program to the stick presumably used some dedicated and non-standard low level writes and afterwards it could not have partitions adjusted or existing ones (high level) formatted under Windows.
Unfortunately I can't remember which tool I used.
SteveW
Try the formatter from
I think the last is that it doesn't respond to SMART commands, which most pen drives don't anyway. However gparted not seeing it isn't encouraging.
Open a terminal, then plug it in. Immediately afterwards, type 'dmesg' and press enter. Then post the last 20 or so lines here. This is the kernel's log when it tries to talk to it, which should tell us what's going on.
Theo
Does it appear when you run lsusb ? That will show if the controller is working, regardless of whatever file system may be present/readable.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.