[Karmic] Unable to format new unformatted Corsair 16 GB USB drive

[Ari Torhamo]

Binary package hint: gnome-disk-utility

I tried to format a new unformated Corsair Flash Voyager 16 GB USB drive in Ubuntu Karmic beta with Palimpsest Disk Utility (gnome-disk-utility), but the tool wasn't able to handle the task. Palimpsest saw the drive space as unallocated, except 1 kb (if I remember the size right), which was shown as unknown partition. When I tried to format the unallocated space, I got the following error message:

Error creating partition: helper exited with exit code 1: In part_add_partition: device_file=/dev/sdd, start=17408, size=16173218816, type=0x83
Entering MS-DOS parser (offset=0, size=16173236224)
MSDOS_MAGIC found
looking at part 0 (offset 16384, size 16173219840, type 0x85)
Entering MS-DOS extended parser (offset=16384, size=16173219840)
readfrom = 16384
No MSDOS_MAGIC found
Exiting MS-DOS extended parser
looking at part 1 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
looking at part 2 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
looking at part 3 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
Exiting MS-DOS parser
MSDOS partition table detected
containing partition table scheme = 0
got it
Error: Invalid partition table on /dev/sdd -- wrong signature 0.
ped_disk_new() failed

After several attempts I tried to format the drive in Windows 7 to FAT32 (to know if the drive is faulty), which went fine. Windows' formatting tool saw the whole drive as unallocated (no 1 kb unknown partition). After this, Karmic was able to reformat the drive to ext4.

This happened a week ago, and I have updated my system since then (attached system information may not be completely relevant). The system was up to date when the problem occurred.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 17 19:51:28 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Alpha amd64 (20091014.1)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gnome-disk-utility 2.28.0+git20091012-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=fi_FI.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.47-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-disk-utility
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64

[EricDHH (ericdhh)]

Confirming some ugly behaviour with a new kingston 16gb stick. Nothing happens but lots of loglines are written to disk. Other and smaller sticks working well.

Description: Ubuntu 9.10 (amd64)
Release: 9.10

[ 2082.591165] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] READ CAPACITY failed
[ 2082.591170] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[ 2082.591175] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Sense Key : Unit Attention [current]
[ 2082.591180] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Add. Sense: Not ready to ready change, medium may have changed
[ 2082.720035] usb 1-5: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 2083.001286] usb 1-5: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 2083.280035] usb 1-5: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 2083.560030] usb 1-5: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 2083.840031] usb 1-5: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 2084.120027] usb 1-5: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 2084.271231] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 2084.271240] sdd: detected capacity change from 16001036288 to 0

Eric

[EricDHH (ericdhh)]

The Kingston 16GB works well since last kernel update on i386 and amd64. Please check the corsair again, maybe this bug is resolved.

Eric

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

I hope someone else is able to test this with a fresh unformatted Corsair (or some other) USB drive, as the one I have is already formatted and thus can't be used for testing (the bug occurred only when my Corsair drive was unformatted (the way it was when I bought it)).

[Jempa (jens-augustsson)]

Same problem on my brand new USB LaCie LittleDisc 500GB. Cannot format the 500GB to anything, "...helper exited with exit code 1...MS-DOS parser."

It already has a 10MB FAT32 partition with some LaCie stuff on, when trying to delete it I get this full error message:

Error erasing: helper exited with exit code 1: In part_del_partition: device_file=/dev/sdc, offset=374063616
Entering MS-DOS parser (offset=0, size=500107862016)
read failed (Input/output error)
Exiting MS-DOS parser
Entering Apple parser
read failed (Input/output error)
Leaving Apple parser
No known partition table found
got it

got disk
got partition - part->type=4
refusing to delete a protected partition

And this is when running sudo palimpsest.

Any workaround?

br,
Jens

[Jempa (jens-augustsson)]

sudo fdisk -l, relevent parts says:

Disk /dev/sdc: 500,1 GB, 500107862016 byte
255 huvuden, 63 sektorer/spår, 60801 cylindrar
Enheter = cylindrar av 16065 · 512 = 8225280 byte
Diskidentifierare: 0x24796452

    Enhet Start Början Slut Block Id System
/dev/sdc1 46 47 10239 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

I assume I don't need to translate this! Or?

br,
Jens

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. A new version of Gnome Disk Utility is available on Maverick and we are wondering if this bug is still an issue for you with that version? Could you please test and comment back? Thanks in advance.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-disk-utility (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]