Reusing remote exam USB device

[John_Daisley]

I took a Red Hat Exam remotely recently and now I'm trying to reusue the USB device which has the downloaded exxam ISO on it but for some reason I cannot remove the encrypted partition that exists on the device. I've tried deleting it, formating it and even writing a whole new partition table to the device but I always get an error when it comes to getting rid of the encrypted partition.

Running `sudo fsck /dev/sdb` gives the error `fsck.ext2: Operation not permitted while trying to open /dev/sdb`

Running fdisk and trying to delete the encrypted partition gives the error `fdisk: failed to write disklabel: Operation not permitted`

It seems at this point the exam ISO has wrecked the USB drive Any suggestions on how I can recover this?

[Chetan_Tiwary_]

@John_Daisley formatting the USB should clean it.

[John_Daisley]

@Chetan_Tiwary_ If I try and format it I get the error `/dev/sdb1: Operation not permitted while setting up superblock`. This is with mkfs.ext4 as root!

[Chetan_Tiwary_]

@John_Daisley Please use a software like Rufus, FormatUSB, Fedora Media writer etc to have the USB formatted.

[Sanju7]

@John_Daisley Try downloading and installing Fedora Media Writer. Once installed, launch the software/application and you can format the USB using the same software. 

[John_Daisley · Accepted solution]

Fedora Media writer reports the device as not being writable and balena etcher fails with a similar error. I have now resolved the issue by borrowing a friends Windows machine which allowed me to manually delete the partitions. Frustrating this was needed but pleased to have resolved the issue. Thanks for the suggestions.

[Chetan_Tiwary_]

ok glad to know that it was resolved!

[PetrCihlar]

The handy GUI tool for Windows is AOMEI Partition Assistant. It is free.