USB stick wiped/trashed trying to install TAILS
#1
Hi. I have burned out a load of integral USB drives trying to put tails on them.
Running tails off a usb stick worked for me for long time, then all copies of tails I downloaded,
even torrented, wrecked the stick. Not recognised by computer.
Anyone else had this problem? If so, how can Someone tell if the download is OK?
Are the usb drives recoverable?
Thanks for help.
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#2
I have never burnt out a USB stick.

I have seen some of the cheap sticks overheat and temporarily stop working when used in a USB 3 port. The solution there is use them in a USB 2 port.

But wrecking a stick simply by putting an OS on them is not something I have seen.
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#3
when USB stick do read/write (especially write) and then the USB port connection is shaken (disconnect for a while), it can cause bad blocks in the USB storage media, then USB stick become damaged/unreadable.
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#4
Are you burning the image from Win or Linux?

As a Linux OS, the USB may be needed to be formatted in Linux first.

The problem might be in the USB controller:
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-check...ash-drive/
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-and-det...h-h2testw/
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#5
Thanks for the replies.
Iwas using windows and rufus or lili, live linux installer, but they started making wiped/not reading usbs.
I put Fedora on my laptop, that worked for a while, then it asked me to format my new 128g stick befor moving some torrented films on to and wiped that
usb too.
I even posted a stick to the person on ebay I bought the Fedora DVD from and that came back dud.

I am trying the programs from raymond.cc/blog/ now, see what they tell me the trouble is. Maybe I can recover some of the large number of USB sticks.
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#6
The usb checker says the sticks are super wonderful, and reads and writes to them,
When I try to format it says file or device error access denied.
I will take them to someone who recovers drives, maybe I can find out what program
is wrecking them
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#7
Fedora may have problems as they do have a tendency to use older software. I'd look into its drivers. Also make sure you are running as root. Plus its file system may not be compatible. Boot from a recent Linux Mint or Debian Buster live disk and see if they will recognize the drive.

128Gb USB may simply be too big for Fedora, else it might have nasty permissions issues hidden away.
It is also possible that Tails itself somehow has misconfigured itself trying to create multiple partitions, which may or not be possible on a flash drive.

Try using Tails on an 8Gb stick and see if that works.

Or, if given the option, do not have it create separate partitions for home, tmp, swap, etc.

Google:
"Is it possible to create multiple partitions on a USB flash drive? "

The link in mind is tooooo long.
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#8
(May 27, 2020, 18:06 pm)waregim Wrote:
Quote:Fedora may have problems as they do have a tendency to use older software. I'd look into its drivers. Also make sure you are running as root. Plus its file system may not be compatible. Boot from a recent Linux Mint or Debian Buster live disk and see if they will recognize the drive.

128Gb USB may simply be too big for Fedora, else it might have nasty permissions issues hidden away. 
It is also possible that Tails itself somehow has misconfigured itself trying to create multiple partitions, which may or not be possible on a flash drive.

Try using Tails on an 8Gb stick and see if that works. 

Or, if given the option, do not have it create separate partitions for home, tmp, swap, etc.

Google:
"Is it possible to create multiple partitions on a USB flash drive? "

The link in mind is tooooo long.

I had exactly the same thing happen to me however the USB sticks can be recovered by using DISKPART in Windows. You need to run the CLEAN option and then create a new Volume or Partition and then Format it. I haven't tried using a Partition Manager to recover them because DISKPART worked. If you use DISKPART just make sure you Select the correct drive or you could totally screw up your system.

The USB was not assigned a drive letter in Windows but it can be seen in Diskpart. I previously used a 4GB USB 2 stick but purchased a couple of 32GB USB 3.0 ones and TAILS seemed to create an 8GB partition and not use the remaining capacity on the stick. I stopped using my 4GB USB 2.0 stick because TAILS v3 would no longer run on it. I also had to downgrade to TAILS v4.5 because v4.6 wouldn't detect my wireless card but v4.5 works just fine.
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#9
Did tails try to create multiple partitions?
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#10
I don't think tails did create multiple partitions, I have wiped a couple of 8gig flash drives also.
The tails download,where it came from did seem to make a diference. I torrented an old version off
thepiratebay instead of trying to get it off boum.org and that worked fine. Then I burned them to dvd and that worked fine.

I'll have ago with some more disk utilities mentioned above.
Thanks for the corroboration it happened to someone else.

I'll make sure I use usb3 with 8gig too
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