Etcher is corrupting SD and USB drives.
See original GitHub issue- Etcher version: 1.0.0
- Operating system and architecture: Arch Linux X86_64
- Image flashed: Raspbian Lite
- Do you see any meaningful error information in the DevTools? No
Etcher has corrupted two brand new SD cards and one USB drive. I formatted a new 64 gig SD drive to fat 32 using gparted then flashed Raspbian to the drive. I decided to use Raspbian Lite and wrote it without a reformat. The flash failed and now the drive cannot be modified, though the files can still be read. For giggles, I tried a second drive that was a new 8 gig drive. Again I formatted, flashed, it worked, reformatted, flashed again, it worked, did not format, flashed and it’s corrupted like the first. I decided to try a cheap Lexar USB drive and the exact same thing happened if I try to flash twice without reformatting first.
I’ve tried the Linux and Windows fix suggested in the docs and it doesn’t work. I tried flashing a different image, it doesn’t work. I tried formatting on another PC and in windows, it doesn’t work. None of my drives were bad before this, two were fresh out of the box, and one was a 5 month old USB drive. For me the issue happens like clockwork with SanDisk and Lexmark drives. I would love to provide logs, but after being disgusted with myself for choosing this program over Imagewriter that I shutdown and about threw my laptop into the road.
Issue Analytics
- State:
- Created 6 years ago
- Reactions:2
- Comments:79 (31 by maintainers)
@franknfurther Etcher doesn’t destroy any hardware, it “just” copies the disk image to whatever device you choose – if your operating system doesn’t recognize any file systems on the flashed device (or fails to format it), it’s still not broken. While we’ve occasionally seen cases where the hardware does give up; it was due to counterfeit, faulty, old hardware or malfunctioning SD-card readers / USB hubs etc.
Believe it or not, we do actually test what we make, and use it every day on countless devices – and so do a couple hundred thousand other people on this planet. Doesn’t mean it’s bug-free though.
So I just successfully flashed two new cards. Seems my SD card was really broken. Apologies for accusing Etcher.