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I am trying to format a microSD card. I have tried (unsuccessfully) erasing the memory from the Settings menu on an Android device at my disposal and now I have plugged the USB and givin it a go from Ubuntu (I can't use Windows).

Every time I try to format (or manually delete) data, every file and directory seem to stay put.

I thought it could be a microSD card corruption problem, but as I type

sudo fsck -a /dev/sdc

The only warning message I get is:

0x41: Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt.
Automatically removing dirty bit.

Then I issue the command one more time and the check is fine.

I've realized that the microSD card is on write-lock. Here it is what I have tried so far with no results whatsoever:

  • put the microSD into an adapter and mechanically slide the the switch to unlock;
  • manually changed permissions as root;
  • gksudo nautilus in order to remove files;
  • fsck.vfat -v -a -w /dev/sdc to try format the card;
  • sudo cfdisk /dev/sdc to erase the partition

I am out of ideas, can anyone please help me try to sort this out?

Update: Running gparted I get this new piece of information

plain floppy: device "/dev/sdc" busy (Resource temporarily unavailable):
Cannot initialize '::'
mlabel: Cannot initialize drive
haunted85
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  • This guy looks like he got it: http://superuser.com/questions/527657/how-do-you-format-a-2-gb-sd-card-to-fat32-preferably-with-disk-utility – ejbytes Dec 29 '15 at 10:10
  • @ejbytes thanks for your input, unfortunately the other OP seems to be on a mac and apparently diskutil is not available on Ubuntu. – haunted85 Dec 29 '15 at 10:15
  • gnome-disks? I used Linux in different "flavours" and I know they all have different syntax, which is why Linux was so difficult for me to learn. Sorry, haven't used it since I stopped programming at a particular University which made it mandatory. Try narrowing your search in Google, you might get lucky. – ejbytes Dec 29 '15 at 10:32
  • @ejbytes no luck there either, it seems like it has been formatted but if I unmount and re-mount the card all the stuff is still there. – haunted85 Dec 29 '15 at 10:36
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    That's a sure sign the firmware write protection has triggered. Give up now. Bin it. – Tetsujin Dec 30 '15 at 16:38

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