Erase disk fails with error " wipefs: error: /dev/sdb1: probing initialization failed: No such file or directory"

[nemith]

I have a USB stick that shows up in the usb-disk-creator when I go to click the button to Erase Disk it returns the error:

org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.GLib.Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/service.py", line 707, in _message_cb
    retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords)
  File "/usr/share/usb-creator/usb-creator-helper", line 285, in Format
    partition = table.call_create_partition_sync(0, size, '0x0c', '', no_options, None)
GLib.Error: udisks-error-quark: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Error.Failed: Error wiping newly created partition /dev/sdb1: Command-line `wipefs -a "/dev/sdb1"' exited with non-zero exit status 1: wipefs: error: /dev/sdb1: probing initialization failed: No such file or directory
 (0)

[nemith (bennetb)]

/dev/sdb1 does exist. Could be a race condition.

$ ls /dev/sdb*
/dev/sdb /dev/sdb1

[Yu Ning (yuningdodo)]

@nemith, what's the disk layout of your usbstick before you erase it with usb-creator?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Mondane (mondane-woodworker)]

I have this too since the upgrade to Ubuntu 15.04.

[Mondane (mondane-woodworker)]

It appears to be a known bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usb-creator/+bug/1294877

[Niko Mikkilä (nmi)]

Still exists in Ubuntu 15.10. Not a duplicate of 1294877.

[Aaron Staley (astaley)]

Same problem here. Is there a workaround? This is preventing me from installing bios updates, starting fresh from a new ubuntu version, etc.

[Rudolf Leitgeb (rudolf-leitgeb)]

I think I read somewhere, that manually invoking the failed command allows the user to proceed. In the case of the original problem report this would be the following command:

         wipefs -a /dev/sdb1

Make sure you pass the correct partition to this command, or you will lose data on whatever device you wiped instead!!! The correct device is the first partition on whatever device is supposed to become a bootable device, usually the device reported in the error message. You need to invoke it with sudo if you aren't already root.

The work around worked for me at least. Since the underlying problem appears to be a race condition, a few retries may help here it it doesn't work right away. And yes, the bug is present in Ubuntu 15.10, too :(

[Haisum (haisumbhatti)]

I am facing same problem. Have attached a snapshot of error message.

[rishi raj gautam (thunderdfrost)]

I am unable to mount the SDcard and when i try to format it, the following error is shown:

Error wiping device: Command-line `wipefs -a "/dev/sdb"' exited with non-zero exit status 1: wipefs: error: /dev/sdb: probing initialization failed
 (udisks-error-quark, 0)

what can be the solution? i am using ubuntu 14.04 LTS