People have been very generous of their time. I've concluded the
USB-key is physically shot, for I have no problems with other keys.
I'd like to summarize the troubleshooting procedure for correction or
to benefit lurkers.
1. The first step is to verify that the USB bus can actually see the
device by plugging it in and checking with the kernel log. The
kernel should be able to extract information from the device such
as the vendor, its size, and the device interface file assigned to
it.
2. Check to see if the data on the device is accessible. Check
permissions, ownership, how much of the partition is being used by
mounting it and doing:
$ ls -la /media/usb-key
$ df /media/usb-key
3. Decide whether the problem is within a partition or at the level of
the partition table by zeroing the partition. Unmount the device
and do (example assumes the device interface is /dev/sdd):
# cat /dev/zero > /dev/sdd1
or
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd1 bs=512 count=1
If this succeeds and you can write a file to the partition, the
problem would seem to be fixed
4. If the zeroing of the partition causes I/O errors, then the problem
is possibly at the partition table level. To wipe the entire device
clean and start from scratch:
Unmount the usb-key, unplug and replug it in.
Then zero the entire drive, removing the partition information:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd bs=512 count=1
If this fails to eliminate the I/O error, then it is likely the
entire device is physically broken. On the other hand, if the
device can be zeroed, then do:
# sync
then again unplug, replug. Then create one partition with cfdisk (or
fdisk) for the whole space.
# cfdisk /dev/sdd
There should be a single logical partition (sdd1 in this example)
of type FAT32. Ignore if cfdisk warns about not having been able
to make kernel aware of the changed partition table. Unplug/replug
again. Then format the single partition of the unmounted device:
# mkdosfs /dev/sdd1
Mount and check if files can be added, read and removed from the
partition.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
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