Deleting corrupted files!?

[Adam Funk]

On 2006-09-22, adair <ulist at gs1.ubuntuforums.org> wrote:

> I have a pen drive that came preloaded with promotional software (for
> Windows). All the file/directory names have become completely
> corrupted---absolute garbage. I have tried using 'rm' and 'wipe' but no
> joy. I have tried deleting the partition and creating a new one. So far
> this hasn't succeeded. Has anyone got any good ideas?

I'd try the following, but make sure you have the right device name,
especially if you have a SATA hard drive!

Plug it in and note the device that appears; suppose it's '/dev/sdb1'.

Unless you've deconfigured something, one of the daemons will try to
pmount it automatically; give it a minute to settle and use `df` or
`mount` to ensure it hasn't been mounted.  Then

$ sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1

to format a new filesystem onto the device.  When it's finished,
unplug it, wait a moment, and plug it back in.