I was trying to flash Armbian onto my 64 GB Kingston USB flash drive using Rufus, but that didn't work, so I tried Armbian Imager instead. Now the drive won't function properly. When I attempt to access it using DiskPart or a partition manager, I get errors saying "DiskPart has encountered an error: A device which does not exist was specified." Sometimes, Windows can't complete the process, and the flash drive disconnects, requiring me to replug it to detect again. I've also tried using SD card formatter, Rufus, Balena Etcher, and Armbian Imager, but nothing seems to fix it. Has anyone dealt with similar issues?
2 Answers
You might want to try wiping the drive using a Mac or Linux system, as it could handle errors from formatting better than Windows.
It might just be that your flash drive has worn out. They can only take a certain number of write cycles before they start failing, which seems to be what’s happening here.
I attempted that, but when I used Linux, the KDE Partition Manager stopped responding and all commands in the terminal seemed to finish without any actual changes.