[Nottingham] Dead USB Memory stick?

[Martin]

Folks,

First some questions, especially for anyone that has a new and *unused*
usb memory stick to try:

On a "blank" unused usb memory stick, which way are the bits set for the
blank flash? All '1's or all '0's?

Are there any utilities to let you completely (low level) erase the
memory stick so that it is back to its unfragmented erased state as when
first manufactured?


I've an 8GB memory stick that survived a mere 3 months being used as a
linux system root (including /var), alongside a second memory stick that
is still ok. I used them as a RAID1 mirror pair with 128kByte chunks
set. I also used ext4 with the options "noatime,commit=60,nouser_xattr".

I can read from the entire memory stick without problem. Trying to write
to it fails after about 1Gbyte from the start.

So... Have I got a dodgy 1GByte memory stick out of the original 8GBytes?

(And yes it is a real 8GBytes and not a resized fake.)

Or can I try some clever reset/reformat trick on it?

Cheers,
Martin


The gory log for an attempted write is attached!

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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