cannot reinstall qubes, wont recognize freespace

[boromi...@sigaint.org]

Im trying to reinstall qubes since the stupid users guide instructed me to
brick my installation, but now when i go to install it will recognize my
disk but it wont recognize the freespace on it.

When i first got my usb it was preformatted as fat32, qubes would
recognize it but say it has no reclaimable space, so i deleted the
partition and tried it again, it worked and it recognized the free space
so i was able to install.

Now that qubes has already been installed on it once this no longer works.
Ive recreated partitions on it and then wiped it clean and then deleted
the partition and it still wont recognize it. Ive used the kingston repair
tool and that only sets it back to FAT and then qubes wont recognize it
for some reason. Over and over again for hours now and it wont let me
reclaim it.

Qubes disk selection area gives an option to reclaim space but it wont let
it, it says 0 reclaimed and 0 used and it shows the full disk space. This
is rediculous, when i install windows it will let me create and delete
partitions but there is no such tool on qubes and it refuses to do
anything under any condition. This is a brand new USB there is no reason
why this should not be working.

So what do i do now? What magical setting does my usb need to be formatted
with to get qubes to install on it?

[Unman]

You might get more help if you were to calm down and be a little less
confrontational.

It isn't clear when you say " it shows the full disk space" if you mean
it shows all the disk space as full. I assume so.
Have you tried looking at the manual configuration options? I know the
manual suggests leaving the automatic option selected but in your
situation I would select manual. You should then be able to manually
delete and create partitions.

unman

[Drew White]

Hello to both of you.

I have encountered this issue myself, but not in relation to Qubes persae.

I had a USB drive that I used, but I lost all on it and Qubes would not recognise it.

It took a few tried to get it going again to install Qubes.

I got it in the end, my suggestion would be to load the installation, go into troubleshooting, and then access the UDB Drive from there, see what happens.

If you can, actually perform the partitioning using FDISK or similar.

I had to re-create the partition table, then create an ext3 partition. Then restart and use the installer again, then reclaimed the space.

But I think the whole issue was in the partition table itself, as something happened to cause that to become corrupted.

Try that, let us know how you go. that alone will provide much insight.

[Andrew David Wong]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

I'm not sure if this is the problem you're experiencing, but it's a
somewhat common problem to "lose space" on a USB drive. Here are
several guides for fixing this in Windows:

http://geekswithblogs.net/ilich/archive/2013/04/26/recovering-
unallocated-space-of-a-usb-flash-drive.aspx
https://www.oxhow.com/recover-lost-space-on-removable-usb-drive/
http://www.ampercent.com/recover-lost-space-removable-usb-drive/9352/

And in Linux:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/329109/usb-flash-drive-emptied-
but-theres-no-free-space-and-no-used-space-on-it

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=OoXb
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[boromi...@sigaint.org]

Thanks, i managed to get it work actually. I dont have it in front of me
now but what i had to do was remove the partition so qubes would recognize
the existence of the usb, then i went into the advanced options in the
drive selection area, the formatting tools still report the same "0b
available 0b reclaimable" even though its empty, so i selected to try to
format it which i think was buried under layers of menu. Then qubes went
ahead and tried to install and then crashed and threw some vague error,
then when i rebooted into the installer if finally read the drive as
having space. I think the installer is unable to read anything that isnt
'LSZ' formatted, but unfortunately LSZ is some sort of unncessarily
complex formatting procedure that you can only do in linux and even the
qubes installer has trouble doing it. Leave it to linux to overcomplicate
something windows does so simply.

[spyke...@gmail.com]

me too i am trying to install qebes from youtuybe and qubes instructions and my flashdrive wont shgow up in windows anymore , why cant i get rid of your software on my flash disk , its the latest version and the install image on the drive bugs out at language selection . ie useless to me like ubuntu so far , please inform windows users how to reformat and recover their writable media on usb . the system is too bugged to install on amd phenom tripple core  with ssd and 6gb ram . I rather want to try next year so there is time to work around this buggy install media . help