[mdlug] Advice

[Jeff Hanson]

On 6/29/12, Garry Stahl <tesral at wowway.com> wrote:
>> Garry I have seen this before. It happens when a thumb drive is improperly
>> removed. It does not always happen when you improperly remove a thumb
>> drive but it does happen sometimes. End result is the thumb drive is now
>> dead.
>>
>
> But it isn't dead, you just cannot get rid of the files that lock a
> windows computer from using it with anyhing but WMP.  It will not even
> change the partitioning.
>

What does the kernel say when you plug it (dmesg|tail; tail /var/log/kern.log)?

I've had drives mounted that when unexpectedly (uncleanly)
disconnected the kernel (or udev) kept the device node assigned and
wouldn't drop it.  It also wouldn't use anything else if the drive was
reconnected.

The only non-typical flash drive structure I've encountered is the
SanDisk U3 system which is designed to emulate a CD and integrate into
the Windows registry, a feature possibly inspired by malware, along
with some security/DRM functions.  There is a utility for
removing/unlocking it called "u3-tool".  I think it's in the Ubuntu
repos.