How to remove iso 9660 from USB?

Question

I have somehow managed to write an iso 9660 image onto my USB drive, which makes all my computer think that the device is actually a CD. I have tried various methods of removing this partition, but nothing seems to work. I have tried fdisk, which says

$ fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Cannot open /dev/sdb

parted crashes when I try to use it on this device.

I have even tried

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

but it just hangs with no output (either on screen or on disk). However, when I plug the USB in, it does mount, and I can view (but not edit) the files on it.

edit: now the result is

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
dd: opening `/dev/sdb': Read-only file system

I have also tried re-formatting it on Windows, but it gets to the end of the format process and then says "Couldn't format the drive".

How can I remove this partition and get my whole USB drive back to normal again?

EDIT 1: Trying a simple mkfs doesn't work:

$ sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb
mkfs.vfat 3.0.0 (28 Sep 2008)
mkfs.vfat: Will not try to make filesystem on full-disk device '/dev/sdb' (use -I if wanted)

I can't do mkfs on /dev/sdb1 because there is no such partition, as shown:

$ ls /dev | grep sdb
sdb

EDIT 2: This is the information posted by dmesg when I plug the device in:

$ dmesg
.
. (snip)
.
usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6387
usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 2-1: Product: Mass  Storage
usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Generic
usb 2-1: SerialNumber: G0905000000000010885
usb-storage: device found at 4
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     FLASH    Drive  AU_USB20  8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB)
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB)
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: unknown partition table
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
SELinux: initialized (dev sdb, type iso9660), uses genfs_contexts
CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 15000 nsec

This shows that the device is formatted as ISO 9660 and that it is /dev/sdb.

EDIT 3: This is the message that I find at the bottom of dmesg after running cfdisk and writing a new partition table to the disk:

SELinux: initialized (dev sdb, type iso9660), uses genfs_contexts
sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] Device not ready: Sense Key : Not Ready [current] 
sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] Device not ready: <> ASC=0xff ASCQ=0xffASC=0xff <> ASCQ=0xff
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb

Answer 1

Okay, it turns out that in this case something (possibly when I wrote the iso-9660 file system to the drive) has triggered some form of internal write protection on the drive. There are no external write protection / hold switches, but yet this is the output in dmesg when I run

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

as root:

sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Write protected
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 4028744
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE,SUGGEST_OK
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Data Protect [current] 
Info fld=0x0

Note the comments in there about protection! However, when I plug the device in, I get,

scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access     FLASH    Drive  AU_USB20  8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB)
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB)
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

Note that this message says that the device is not write protected! So unfortunately, it looks like the disk has had it (i.e kaput).

Answer 2

I am new to this Linux sys admin stuff, so when I had exactly the same problem I poked and prodded with no madness to my method but managed to remove the iso9660 fs and reclaim the thumb drive.

sudo fdisk -l  /dev/sdb1

returned

Disk /dev/sdb1: 16.0 GB, 16037969920 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15295 cylinders, total 31324160 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I>/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x57155aa7

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1p1            2048    31324159    15661056    5  Extended

So I then tried

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb1

Command (m for help): m
Command action
  . . .

followed by

Command (m for help): d Extended
Selected partition 1

Command (m for help): v
Remaining 31324159 unallocated 512-byte sectors

Then when prompted again selected for fdisk to create an empty dos partition table (something I figured I could overwrite with whatever I wanted later)

Command (m for help): v
Remaining 31324159 unallocated 512-byte sectors

Command (m for help): o
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xea06616f.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 22: Invalid argument.
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at
the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
Syncing disks.

I took the returned messages to mean that I at least "broke" the iso9660 fs so went on to try mkfs

sudo mkfs /dev/sdb1

mke2fs 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
979200 inodes, 3915520 blocks
.195776 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
.Maximum filesystem blocks=4009754624
120 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8160 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
    32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208

Writing inode tables: done                            
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 28 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first.  Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

All this left me with the "lost+found" directory on the thumb drive.

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/
ls /media/
lost+found

Finally, I went to the Ubuntu website (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download, section 2) and used the stick to create a bootable image of Ubuntu for trial use, and it let me. The beauty of the Ubuntu images made on the stick this way is that they can be deleted easily and the stick reclaimed for other use.

I mention this very last step because in hindsight I wonder if I had done just that in the first place that it would have worked, I dunno. As mentioned, I am new to this Linux stuff and am trying different distro's (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.) on live cd's with whatever media is most convenient, and I sure do break a lot of stuff along the way.

Answer 3

mkdosfs -I /dev/sdb

will create a vfat file system on the drive. The -I has to be passed if you want the file system to be created on the entire drive and not on a partition. If you want to partition the drive first, use fdisk. Of course fdisk can't read the drive now, because it doesn't have any partitions. But I'm sure it will be able to write to it.

Answer 4

Currently your USB drive got no partition table, iso9660 filesystem sits directly on whole disk (just like a cdrom)

sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: unknown partition table

I think you need make a partition first

sudo cfdisk /dev/sdb

(make sure it's not mounted before) in the fdisk application create a new partition.

after that is done, make the filesystem on the new partition

sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1

Answer 5

Looking at the dmesg snippet, it seems something is automaticaly mounting the drive (check with mount). Before doing anything with it, you should umount it by hand.

Then zero the block with the partition table (dd if=/dev/zero of=... bs=512 count=1), and run a partitioning tool to recreate an empty partition table. After that, unplug and replug (should not be needed, but...) and create/format the partitions you want on it. After creating the partitions (perhaps you will have to unplug and replug again), you should have /dev/sdb1 or something like that, which is where you should create the filesystem.

Note that all steps should be done as root (with sudo or an equivalent). Be careful to not write the wrong device name, or you could wipe your harddisk!

Answer 6

Last night I did

dd if=fedora.iso of=sdx  

After four hours I had an unbootable, unchangeable, iso9660 brick. Following David's train of thought, I called Ubuntu's 'startup disk creator' (Type 'startup disk creator' in the dash), and merely selected 'erase'. That did it.

The USB drive was then reported as FAT32 and all is well.

Answer 7

The best and proper way to do it is:

# wipefs --all /dev/sdX

As from the wipefs manual:

wipefs can erase filesystem, raid or partition-table signatures (magic strings) from the specified device to make the signatures invisible for libblkid.

wipefs does not erase the filesystem itself nor any other data from the device. When used without any options, wipefs lists all visible filesystems and the offsets of their basic signatures.

wipefs calls the BLKRRPART ioctl when it has erased a partition-table signature to inform the kernel about the change.

This has many advantages like informing the kernel about the change (so you don't get any errors when formatting afterwards), not erasing data nor filesystems, and so on.

Answer 8

I still feel that we are assuming something that's going to turn out to be untrue. Since the device is readable, this line will at least let you see the data for yourself, rather than depending on the other programs' interpretations.

 dd if=/dev/sdb  count=1 | xxd -g1 -u 

Also, maybe we could separate problems with the dev node from problems with what's on the device, by forcing it onto another port. Either plug it into another USB jack, or plug another drive in first, to occupy sdb.

Answer 9

I had the exact same problem as you. However, I was able to find a solution from a surprising place. An old laptop with Windows 98SE on it, which is the last Windows system I ever owned. Anyway just put it in and when you try to access the drive Windows will ask you if you'd like to format it. Click yes and you'll have a fat16 formatted drive that's fully functional. I don't know if it works with newer versions of Windows though. Best of luck.

Answer 10

Maybe with a simple

mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1

Answer 11

Remove the drive and see if you can still read from it. I wonder if somehow /dev/usb (or wherever you read from) has become an ordinary file directory.

Answer 12

Have you tried to re-mount it with -t option?

umount /dev/sdb
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /mnt/point

If that won't work, I'll try to reproduce it later, when I get home. Seems like an interesting problem. Will be fun to tinker with :]

Answer 13

Just in case someone comes across this old thread looking for answers:

To get rid of these types of errors:

The device contains 'iso9660' signature and it will be removed by a write command. See fdisk(8) man page and --wipe option for more details.

or

The device contains 'iso9660' signature and it may remain on the device. It is recommended to wipe the device with wipefs(8) or fdisk --wipe, in order to avoid possible collisions.

Run this command:

wipefs --all /dev/sdx

Source

The Arch Linux Install image uses ISO 9660. Their wiki explains,

To restore the USB drive as an empty, usable storage device after using the Arch ISO image, the ISO 9660 filesystem signature needs to be removed by running wipefs --all /dev/sdx as root, before repartitioning and reformatting the USB drive.

Answer 14

U3 has a utility to remove their U3 partition. It also removes the partition/device created by the utility that creates the iso 9660. This has been confirmed only on a u3 usb stick, but it is able to be formatted now and totally recover the entire space as a flash drive. You might give it a shot.

Answer 15

windows OS 2 things worked after many attempts

1. using a program called victoria ,used to solve bad sector, Iused it to write to the flash usb but take care not to write to ur essential hard disk

2. using easeuse partition master full version to wipe data on it 7 times then make primary partiton using it