fdisk Unable to write dev sdg Bad file descriptor

Question

Hi Guys,

I am trying to format my USB disk, but it shows me the below error.

fdisk: Unable to write /dev/sdg: Bad file descriptor

Answer 1

Hi@akhtar,

You may get this error if your disk has only read only mode. You have to disable read-only mode on the USB disk first. Now follow the below given steps.

• Make sure hdparm is installed, then run the following command.

$ hdparm -r0 /dev/sxx

• Install the util-linux package and then wipe out the file system.

$ wipefs --all /dev/sxx --force

• Make a new partition on the disk using fdisk:

$ fdisk -cu /dev/sxx

then ‘d‘ to delete and ‘w‘ to write.

• The disk is now ready to be formatted. To format the disk with the ext4 file system, the following command can be used.

 $ mkfs.ext4 /dev/sxx

Hope this will solve your error.