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unixbot443

Member

Registered: 2026-03-28

Posts: 4  

Weird usb partitioning issues

I am experiencing some weird USB partitioning issues.  In gparted, my usb stick does not show the full size, and when there should be 3 partitions, only 1 is listed.  lsblk shows 3 partitions.  When I go to do a dd to write a iso (~4gb) to usb, it takes ~2s.  I've tried 2 different usb sticks now, and get the same thing.

Mercury

Member

Registered: 2024-11-14

Posts: 38  

Re: Weird usb partitioning issues

Unfortunately, I don't have any insight, but I have encountered instances where gparted was "confused" about the partitions on a drive but CLI tools (including parted!) correctly recognized the layout. I've been suspicious of it ever since.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,430  

Re: Weird usb partitioning issues

Defective or fake stick?

unixbot443

Member

Registered: 2026-03-28

Posts: 4  

Re: Weird usb partitioning issues

Nope, they were working previously.

greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2017-04-07

Posts: 1,608  

Website

Re: Weird usb partitioning issues

Okay, in general it depends on the tool you used to create partitions. Gparted has a flaw where it can't always read a USB properly, but it's not altogther Gparted's fault all the time. There are a number of tools to create a liveUSB, and a lot will install your iso, but they take up the entire stick with one iso-9660 partition. Unless the tool that you used to create any new partitions pre-emptively wiped the free space before it created your new partitions, it will frequently leave a small signature of 5 bytes that still identifies it (at least to Gparted) as one big partition.

The gnome-disk-utility should "see" your other partitions correctly, but even if you make new ones with it Gparted still won't "see" them even if GDU and your file-manager do, because GDU doesn't pre-emptively wipe either. But it will see extra partitions even if Gparted won't.

Both gnome-related, so good luck with getting them to admit it's an issue or fix it.

Last edited by greenjeans (2026-04-24 23:27:18)

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Elyon

Member

Registered: 2026-03-25

Posts: 32  

Re: Weird usb partitioning issues

Have you tried wiping all partition info on the usb?

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M status=progress

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