How to remove Puppy Linux partition from USB stick?

[Tonto]

I have a 1 Gb usb stick, which I divided in 2 partitions:
- Partition 1 is 500 Mb ext3 boot
- Partition 2 is 500 Mb fat16
I installed Puppy Linux on Partition 1 and everything worked fine, until I decided to enlarge Partition 1. Somehow I screw up in trying to achieve that.

Now Puppy isn't booting anymore and I'm trying to start from scratch again.
But I can't remove both partitions or even remove files from Partition 1.
I'm getting I/O errors.

I tried repartitioning the stick with GParted. This is the message I got
GParted 0.3.3
Libparted 1.8.8
Delete /dev/sdb2 (ext2, 486.34 MiB) from /dev/sdb 00:11 ( ERROR )

calibrate /dev/sdb2 00:01 ( SUCCES )

path: /dev/sdb2
start: 996030
end: 1992059
size: 996030 (486.34 MiB)
delete partition 00:10 ( ERROR )
libparted messages ( INFO )

Input/output error during write on /dev/sdb

========================================

Delete /dev/sdb1 (ext3, 486.31 MiB) from /dev/sdb

========================================



With Fdisk, CFdisk and also in Windows with Power Quest Partition Magic and Paragon Partition Manager I keep getting error messages.
I also tried to change permissions on the puppy files with chmod, but that didn't help either.

Attached is the result of ls command.

Can somebody help me out?

[freamon]

This isn't very helpful, but I had a similar situation once, and like you I couldn't get Gparted or Fdisk to actually make any changes. I even tried hexediting it to wipe out the partition table completely, but that didn't work either (it looked like it did, but re-opening it showed the same contents as before).

I may well be wrong, but I've a horrible feeling that once flash memory gets corrupted, it's dead and only suitable for the bin.

If you want to try hexedit though, go here: http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/hexedit.html
and download:
http://rigaux.org/hexedit-1.2.12.bin.i386.dynamic.tgz

Then do "hexedit -s /dev/sdb" on the unmounted stick and zero out the first few lines. Then put a new DOS partition table back using Fdisk. You never know, it might work.

[Tonto]

When I do: hexedit -s /dev/sdb
I get: Permission denied

[Tonto]

Oops I forgot to give the command with sudo.
I've done it but after that I still couldn't do anything

[Bruce B]

Oops I forgot to give the command with sudo.
I've done it but after that I still couldn't do anything

No sudo, no *buntu.

If the stick is bad, it is bad. We can't fix that of course.

Supposing it's not bad?

Then you can setup the partitions as wanted, what exactly do you want? If I know, I think I can give specific help.

[d4p]

If the stick is bad, it is bad.

Low level format may help
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Har ... Tool.shtml

[DaveS]

If you have a Windows machine handy, plug in the stick, right click on the drive in Explorer, and select 'format'. I had this problem too a few weeks back, and for some reason, that fixed it when Linux could not.

[Tonto]

Bruce B: I'm trying to make the stick usable again by deleting the current partitions and setup a new partition.
The low level format tool was what I was looking for, but too bad I got errors when running a low level format. After that the old partitions show up again in Gparted and I cannot reformat or remove them.
Looks like the stick is dead.

[Doglover]

Try this... download a copy of Parted Magic

http://downloads.partedmagic.com/

Burn as iso and boot up with it,

Gparted as well as other tools are on the disk, I would try Testdisk, Worth a shot.

[Tonto]

Doglover,
Thx for the tip, now I have one more tool to check out things I messed up.
Too bad Test Desk didn't help. I even tried Shred but that gave me a fdata sync I/O error.
I think I'll have to throw the stick in the bin.

Thanks everybody for trying to help me out.

[DaveS]

Tonto .................. would House give up?

[Tonto]

DaveS,
You're right. I'll give it another shot. I'll try Vista to see if that helps. Keep you posted.