Multiple Fails on Proven USB Stick
Using: Corsair Voyager GTX 256gb, have had multiple versions of E2B running just fine.
Wanted to rebuild the drive from scratch and include the new UEFI options.
Chose to format as so:
P1: 120GB / NTFS
P2: 2GB / Fat32
P3: Remaining / NTFS
I had one semi-successful creation but something went wrong, I can't remember exactly but it made me want to re-make the drive. Suddenly, Make_E2B.exe was not recognizing the drive, yet I could see it in Windows just fine. I can format it (PMagic) a million ways a million times. I've completely wiped partitions, tried going to GPT, back to MBR, nothing. I tried a different USB drive finally, two different Sandisk Ultra 16GB USB3.0 drives, one known working one brand new I had sitting around. Still nothing.
I then tried running MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE (run as admin).cmd (As Admin) and was able to finally see the GTX drive. I went through the steps, it fails saying there's no path given from windows. That's as far as I got on that drive. I did get one of the Sandisk drives to run through complete, but I need the GTX drive and now I feel like it's been affected by this software.
Anyone else have these issues?
Try testing the drive with fakeflashtest.exe
Make_E2B.exe only displays formatted USB drives (one with a valid Windows-readable volume letter like K:).
If the USB drive has no Windows-compatible volumes then use the Gear Wheel button in Make_E2B.exe which calls Make_E2B_USB_drive.cmd and will list all USB drives (even unformatted or linux ext drives).
It is often possible to 'successfully' format a 'bad' or 'fake' USB drive as FAT32 because the filesystem only occupies the start of the volume. However, formatting a partition as NTFS has a lot more checks, one of which is to check a backup sector which is placed at the end of the NTFS volume and the $MFT areas which is at the 3GB point in the volume. If the drive/volume contains no or bad memory at the end of the drive then the NTFS format will fail.
To save some time, the drive isn't fake. I've been using this drive as a successful E2B drive for years now. Multiple versions have gone on it just fine. Usually I just do an update, but since there was a major change since my last update I figured I'd start fresh. The furthest I can get is it fails after creating the first partition. Yet I can create these partitions manually just fine. Seems to be some I/O error happening? I'm on Win11, which I think is the problem. I'm going to test on my 2nd machine which is a Win10 machine if my attempts now fail again. I've disabled any real time protections.
After manually creating the partitions and just using the Update tool, the GUI can see the drive finally. So something is going wonky elsewhere and I can't seem to get past the formatting issue after the first partition.
Now I'm getting this in Win11.
--- Windows Defender ---
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Defender\MsMpeng.exe
State=401664 (dec) : 06-21-00 (hex)
Type of antivirus : ANTIVIRUS, AUTOUPDATED
Scanning status : ***disabled***
Virus definitions : UP-TO-DATE
Press any key to continue . . .
It has failed to format the usb drive and since a common cause is that it is being blocked by antimalware program it just lists all antivirus software on your system so you can see if any are active
If you don't want to try a different usb drive or test the drive then that is your choice, but e2b V2 uses different partitions from v1, so you can't say that if it worked with e2b v1 it will work with e2b v2!
I don't have any AV software other than Windows Defender, which never gave me a problem before. Now it seems to be causing the issues, which boggles my mind because I was able to get another drive to go through the complete stages. Even now on my Win10 rig, I get the same error. I've disabled Defender, testing now. Let's move passed the bad drive theory here, this is a problem with E2B and permissions/false threats.
Well e2b has had well over a million downloads. Every time this scenario has happened it has turned out to be a faulty or fake USB drive.
You said a different usb drive works, you said the bad usb drive fails on two different systems, win10 and win11. You have not tested the bad usb with any flash test program. Seems pretty obvious to me...
I guess the drive is bad then. Moving on. Never had this issue before. Yes I used the test program. Good thing I have another drive coming today. I'll give a final update after I test that one out.
I swear, this drive was fine. The errors I was getting before were not the same, only after a few attempts was I getting this, which lead me to believe the drive was fine. Apologies.