Arch Linux

Dum

Member

Registered: 2026-06-14

Posts: 2

sdb flahdrive cannot be formated

so ive got a flash drive that i wanted to use as an install medium for arch, but while formating it with windows i canceled the format for some reason, so it ended up being RAW. After that I tried to flash it with uui,it showed me an error about not having enough memory on the flash drive which should have been my red flag, becuase it had more than enough memory, but i started flashing anyway. While flashing, because i had so many drives including partitions for a previous linux install i thought i fricked up and was about to erase every single file on the wrong drive so i force quit uui but then found out that i tried to flash the flash drive. After that windows didn't allow me to open the device. I tried doing everything, but it seems i completely locked it. After i installed arch on my ssd i tried formating it with sudo mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb but it showed me this: mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31) mkdosfs: unable to open /dev/sdb: No medium found.

What do i do? It's important to make it work again.

Dum

Member

Registered: 2026-06-14

Posts: 2

Re: sdb flahdrive cannot be formated

sorry for the grammar im from Bulgaria

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,349

Re: sdb flahdrive cannot be formated

Run "dmesg -W", plug the flash drive in and post the output that generates.

i force quit uui

Chances are you'll have to properly flash it (again)

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NICUP14

Member

Registered: 2025-11-05

Posts: 1

Re: sdb flahdrive cannot be formated

Well you should plug the drive, check where it was assigned by running `lsblk`, then format the one that appears.