Karmic: how to delete /dev/sr1

[Mark Fraser]

On Saturday 06 Mar 2010 20:04:20 Alan Dacey Sr. wrote:
> On Saturday 06 March 2010 01:58:09 pm Mirto Silvio Busico wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > I have an external USB hard disk from Western Digital (model My
> > Passport).
> >
> > This unit comes with two partitions, that I see and I can mount:
> >
> >     * /dev/sr1 that is understood as a CD
> >     * /dev/sdb1 that is a normal NTFS partition
> >
> > If I mount the partitions "mount" says:
> >
> > ...
> > /dev/sr1 on /media/WD SmartWare type udf
> > (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=1000)
> > /dev/sdb1 on /media/My Passport type fuseblk
> > (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)
> >
> > The problem is tah I'm not able to destroy, eliminate, kill :-) the
> > /dev/sr1 partition
> >
> > With the partitions unmounted, nor "gparted" nor "fdisk" see the damned
> > partition
> >
> > Trying "sudo fdisk /dev/sr1" I see:
> >
> > mirto at msb02:~/script$ sudo fdisk /dev/sr1
> > Impossibile scrivere la tabella delle partizioni.
> > Nota: la dimensione del settore è 2048 (non 512)
> > Il dispositivo non contiene né una tabella delle partizioni DOS valida,
> > né una disklabel Sun, SGI od OSF
> > Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x0c58531d.
> > Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
> > After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.
> >
> > Attenzione: il flag 0x0000 non valido della tabella delle partizioni 4
> > verrà corretto con w(rite)
> >
> > Comando (m per richiamare la guida): p
> >
> > Disco /dev/sr1: 700 MB, 700448768 byte
> > 255 testine, 63 settori/tracce, 21 cilindri
> > Unità = cilindri di 16065 * 2048 = 32901120 byte
> > Identificativo disco: 0x0c58531d
> >
> > Dispositivo Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> >
> > Comando (m per richiamare la guida):
> >
> >
> > How can I kill this partition?
> >
> >
> > Thanks
> >     Mirto
> >
> > P.S. BTW I use Karmic 64 bit with updates of 4 March
> 
> This is an odd day.  I was about to ask the very same thing.  I saved this
>  as a draft to send after I tried one last thing:
>   I got a free usb stick that has a read-only, write-protected partition
>  that mounts as a cd.  I find this very annoying and have been trying to
>  get rid of it for months.  I either am phrasing my google searches wrong
>  or am using the wrong words.  Whatever I find is all about actual cd
>  drives and not about a usb stick.  I can play with the ownership and such
>  but I can't find a way to get to get it to mount it as something like
>  /dev/sdh1.  It always mounts as /dev/sr1  It is always non-writable so I
>  can't kill the partition.
>   U3 tools do not work.
>   Does anybody know where to find out how to do this?

I had exactly the same thing on Friday, a SanDisk USB stick with the U3 
software on it. Tried installing u3_tool but couldn't seem to get them 
working. After a bit of searching I found a post that said install the version 
of u3-tool that comes with 10.04 and can be downloaded from 
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/u3-tool.
Then do
sudo u3-tool -p 0 /dev/sd*
where * is the letter of the device you're trying to fix.

-- 
Registered Linux User #466407 http://counter.li.org