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I have a new notebook and wanted to reinstall Ubuntu (in GPT, since the hard drive also has GPT) using Rufus. But Rufus failed. Now I get the USB error message: "No Medium."

I have already read some solutions.

But:

The 'Clean' function of Diskpart does not work because there is allegedly no medium in the device.

In the FAQ of Rufus there's a lot, but I also can't find anything about the medium error message.

I thought about the ChipGenius tool, but I don't know exactly where my device is in the list, and I definitely don't want to do any more damage.

Do I have to throw away my so far working great USB stick and have to buy a new one, and take the risk that it won't work afterwards? Then I'd rather use a DVD right away.

Ramhound
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SpiritTiger
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    Does this answer your question? USB flash drive not working or is appearing as an empty disk drive, Disk Management reports "No Media" with 0 bytes size – Kamil Maciorowski Mar 12 '24 at 16:10
  • I followed this advice ("Go to MyComputer/Manage/USB Controller/USB Mass Storage/Unistall while plugged, then remove it, and re-plug in, the driver will -re-installed. It solved it on my computer."), unfortunately it didn't help. – SpiritTiger Mar 12 '24 at 16:18
  • Try Ventoy. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html Just install (it re-formats as well) then copy the ISO as it is, done. Obviously make sure the ISO you're using isn't corrupt. – ChanganAuto Mar 12 '24 at 18:41
  • If Rufus won't work I have my doubts about Ventoy. It sounds like the drive failed, and Rufus, absolutely did not cause it to fail. – Ramhound Mar 12 '24 at 19:04
  • @Ramhound Absolutelly. I just recommended a tool that doesn't need constant reformatting which worsens any problem (and will error out if the media is bad already). And the media is dead for sure ;) and NOT because of Rufus, it's the typical post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. – ChanganAuto Mar 12 '24 at 19:30
  • You would write the exact same amount to the drive with both Ventoy and Rufus. It would wear out its flash memory just the same. – Daniel B Mar 12 '24 at 21:55
  • Since the USB stick worked excellently, up to the second I used Rufus, it can be assumed that Rufus is responsible. It is a question of logic. Maybe I shouldn't have changed from MBR to GTP (which is more modern and better).

    Although I must confess that it always annoys me when programs intervene so deeply in the system that everything is broken when something goes wrong. I know that third-party programs sometimes block the use, something like that will be here.

     – SpiritTiger Mar 13 '24 at 17:56
  • Since Rufus runs without installation, however, it is difficult to find out to what extent it intervenes exactly with the operating system (I have already deleted the registry entry).

    I will use a DVD with the Windows own burning function. Too bad about the stick. Maybe it works on another computer.

     – SpiritTiger Mar 13 '24 at 18:01
  • Rufus dev here. Rufus does not "intervene" with the Operating System (it just writes a bunch of settings to the registry such as user language and other user preferences so that it can retrieve them for the next session -- that's all) and it uses the Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer for all media write operations (meaning that it only sees a disk with blocks, not a USB/SSD/HDD device). it's also completely Open Source so, if you really want to, you don't have to "guess" at what it does -- you can find that for yourself (or rely on other to tell you if they see something strange). – Akeo Mar 13 '24 at 20:31
  • If you believe that Rufus may have contributed to the failure of your drive, then I encourage you to read this relevant entry from our FAQ. Also to answer a previous assertion that using Rufus over Ventoy will wear out flash drive memory faster, there is actually very little difference in the amount of data Rufus and Ventoy write for equivalent results, since formatting and partitioning actually write very few blocks. This is something anyone should easily be able to validate as well. – Akeo Mar 13 '24 at 20:34
  • Can somebody here deal badly with criticism? However - I have to say that this is not the first time I am installing an operating system via USB stick, and Rufus is probably the best there is for Windows. So you are rightly convinced of this. Back to the topic: For this reason, I rather exclude Ventoy, it seems to me to be at the core quite similar to Rufus. In fact, the Windows-internal program "Disk Management." shows me much more information than partition programs from external ones. – SpiritTiger Mar 13 '24 at 23:01
  • (And of course I could search everything myself, I was already very independent as a child. But: Then an support platform would be superfluous).

    But I will deal with Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer in more detail - thank you for that!

     – SpiritTiger Mar 13 '24 at 23:05

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