USB flash drive not bootable anymore -- can it be fixed?

Using TestDisk to repair the filesystem
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jepe
Posts: 1
Joined: 25 Aug 2015, 07:03

USB flash drive not bootable anymore -- can it be fixed?

#1 Post by jepe »

I'm not sure what caused it, I was installing linux, I did boot from an USB pen drive several times, also I formatted it and wrote various images on it... and all of a sudden it would not boot anymore...
also my other pen drives would fail the same way... (i.e. after writing the same image on it, the same way as I just had written the image in the other drive, it would not be bootable...)

(note, I changed the image writing software!!! and also the formatting software -- I only don't name it because I don't want to blame any software unjustly :) )

NOW I have found testdisk and I'm very happy about it.

One of the pen drives had geometry problems, 125 instead of 255 and 62 instead of 64 (or 63), and even after fixing it, it had this non-matching problem.. and it was not bootable...

the other one seems to be bootable (according to testdisk analysis), however, instead of 64 it has 63 as a value for one of the geometric params... AND my machine(s) won't boot from it

my question is whether a flash drive which lost its ability to be bootable can ever be fixed to boot again?

thank you so much in advance

Peter
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Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: USB flash drive not bootable anymore -- can it be fixed?

#2 Post by Fiona »

Fixing geometry often doesn't help as much.
Only if a partition is wrong or not found.
Most pen drives are not Intel Standard.
In some cases created partitions are not aligned on Intel-partition table standard but they're aligned on megabyte bondary (it's a newer standard) too.
Can you repeat your diagnose and copy and paste the content of your testdisk.log into your next post?
You'll find it within your testdisk folder.

Fiona
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