Re: [gentoo-user] flash drive FAT partition disappears

[Marcus Wanner <marcusw@cox.net>]

On 11/19/2009 3:22 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> I suspect you did nothing wrong and that the problem is either a
> coincidental hardware failure or something the owner did to the stick
> after you returned it. Convincing the owner of that is another matter.
>   
I am pretty sure that this is the case. The fact that the partition 
table is no longer valid is very interesting, and I would be interested 
in seeing the first 512 bytes (I believe that is where the partition 
table resides) of the dd image, if you can make one, just to see if it's 
corrupt or has been correctly erased. The fact that there is 2 TB left 
according to gparted leads me to believe that it is corrupt, which would 
mean that it is probably a hardware failure, and nothing to do with 
Linux, as someone else said.

Good luck with that student, here's hoping there was nothing important 
on that drive when it died!

Marcus