Member Avatar for nadiam

Hi. I wasn't sure which topic this falls under as it sort of concerns both OS and this is, I'm sure, a really noob (I want to start learning linux) question but can i use one pen drive between the 2 different OS's?

Earlier I was using my pen drive which is a SanDisk Cruzer Pop 4GB between my Windows 8.1 laptop and my recently installed Ubuntu 14.04 laptop and it was going well. On both laptops I safely removed the pen drive before unplugging it but now the pen drive can't be detected. I've tried it on both laptops and 2 other PCs and its undetected.

If i was suppose to format it somehow to make it compatible to both OS's, well I didn't know so I didn't do so. So basically I just want to know if its broken, is there a way to fix it if it is broken and maybe a kind soul could point me into the right direction so this doesn't happen to my other pen drives (formatting for compatibility perhaps).

Sorry if this seems like a really stupid question. Anyway, thanks in advance!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Floret
Member Avatar for rproffitt

Pen drives are not forever drives. I come across dead ones all the time (folk bring me their bad things to look at.)

Go try that HP USB FORMATTER and see if it comes bout but we are talk a MacD happy meal priced item today.

Member Avatar for rubberman

What rproffitt said. In addition, FYI, pen/thumb drives (and sd cards) have a limited number of write cycles for each sector (512+ bytes). As that number is approached, the write time slows down, and then that sector is no longer accessible. There is more recent software that will attemp to wear-balance these behaviors so that the drive lasts longer, but unlike "spinning rust" (standard hard drives) when these solid state devices fail, they are done - period. This is why they are called "write once, read mostly" devices. They can be read pretty much forever, but only written to a limited number of times.

Member Avatar for rubberman

To continue: these same issues are relevant to SSDs (solid-state discs). They are really fast, but they should ONLY be used for read-mostly operations, such as operating system boot, system libraries and configuration files, etc. For your working data, use a standard disc, or risk losing everything very unexpectedly. This also applies to log files which are very much write-only data.

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

To continue: these same issues are relevant to SSDs (solid-state discs).

It is my understanding that SSDs are built to much higher standards such that they can be refreshed several order of magnitudes more times before failing. Also, SSDs have extra space, over and above the allocated space, so that spare sections can be allocated to replace the failed sections.

Having said that, I do regular backups of ALL my hard driv es, SSD or otherwise.

Edited by Reverend Jim
commented: Sticks don't compare well to SSDs when it comes ot wear leveling. That is, SSDs do this, sticks almost never have this. +12
Member Avatar for Floret

The tool we needed

  • YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer)
    1. Run the YUMI
    2. Select Your pendrive from the Drop-Down list
    3. Check on the format checkbox
    4. Select the preferred version of the windows
    5. Click on next and wait for downloading the ISO file
    6. After the completion one pop-up message box will come by asking that "Would you like to add more ISO/Distros Now on the name of the pen drive>
    7. click Yes
    8. Select the Linux Distro and repeat the previous steps to write here..
Edited by Floret
commented: Short version. I like this. +12
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