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Disk Utility won't let me do anything with broken flash drive?

Hi there,

I own an 8GB SanDisk flashdrive that recently, and out of nowhere, changed permissions to write only. I feel like this may have something to do with the fact that when it was in my old Macbook I would close the screen with it still inserted and it would eject itself and the drive has possibly become corrupt because of this happening one too many times? Anyhow, when moving files around and to my new Macbook and what not, I tried to move some from this USB and it wouldn't let me. I eventually worked out that it would let me copy the files and paste them elsewhere, but now I have this flash drive with a bunch of files that can still be read and I don't know what to do with it because it won't let me delete them either. When I try it comes up with "The item can't be moved to the trash because it can't be deleted." I've tried Disk Utility and this is what happens under the First Aid, Erase and Partition options


User uploaded file

User uploaded file

User uploaded file

I've also tried the appropriate commands in terminal to try to get the disk utility to respond and I kept recieving error messages there too. Also, when I click on the volume underneath the disk it shows all the space that all the files that are very much there are taking up but then also says there's zero files.

User uploaded file

Anyone know what on earth is going on?! I mean I know the USB has probably just had it but I'm wondering if there's any possible way I can repair or erase it at this point?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Mar 10, 2014 5:32 AM

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8 replies

Mar 10, 2014 6:59 AM in response to onebrokefangirl

You could try using Terminal and the diskutil command to erase/format the thumb drive.


Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal

At the prompt, type diskutil list to get the TAYLOR partition path.

Then, type diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ TAYLOR /dev/disk0sX (where X is the partition you want to format). This will format it as Mac OS Extended-Journaled. If it shows up in DU to manage then you can reformat however you like.


Hope this helps!

Disk Utility won't let me do anything with broken flash drive?

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