etcher: Error couldn't clean the drive...

**Etcher version:**1.2.1
Operating system and architecture: Windows 10 Home v. 1703, built-in SD card reader (Samsung 32 GB micro SD card in adapter)
Image #flashed: Retropie 4.3
Do you see any meaningful error information in the DevTools? Yes, although I’m not sure what it means.

I am trying to install the retropie onto my SD card, however Etcher keeps hanging on “starting” for a few seconds then erroring out (see below). So far I have tried to reinstall Etcher a couple times, tried to run Etcher as both administrator (I get the error) and not as the administrator (just hangs on “starting”). I tried cleaning the SD card with diskpart, however I keep getting this error. I can manually copy files onto the SD card from within windows, so the SD card isn’t locked out.

Any advice that can be offered would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Windows Error Message:

Etcher DevTools

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 6 years ago
Comments: 29 (11 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Here is a workaround (for me at least) for “cannot zero sectors on disk” with error code 5@0101000F. All is done through diskpart so Etcher can incorporate this with your own diskpart script:

list disk #find out which disk you want to wipe
clean #throw out error, just a confirmation step but I always do this before applying workaround
convert gpt #disk in question is in MBR. I only burnt MBR image so I don't have a case where disk is in GPT
clean #this time you should be able to wipe the disk

No reboot or unplug reqiured. By doing this Etcher will be able to clean the disk again and complete the burning process.

+65

MakiseKurisu on Sep 15, 2018

@xmesaj2 this actually worked lol thanks!

magnusquest on Apr 21, 2023

Hi All, Small thing, but I also get the "couldn’t clean the drive’ error.

Then I created a new local account with a username that has no spaces in it. Works like a charm.

I suspect that the ‘diskpart’ operation isn’t escaping spaces in the path. I’m not able to test it now, but perhaps a small tweak to the line https://github.com/resin-io/etcher/blob/93b772f1976d5f7989d900d6fdcf9f9c84759694/lib/cli/diskpart.js#L72

childProcess.exec(diskpart /s "${filename}", (execError, stdout, stderr) =>’

Would solve the problem.

HennieLouw on May 17, 2018

I’m consistently seeing this error on multiple USB drives once I’ve used Etcher to create a USB installer for Centos 7 minimal.

I have this error in my event viewer for VDS basic provider: Cannot zero sectors on disk \\?\PhysicalDrive2. Error code: 5@0101000F

This error appears in groups of 5 (roughly 2 seconds apart) when caused by Etcher, and just once when caused by me using diskpart.

I have found the solution (at least for me) is to run 2 successive clean operations before using etcher.

DISKPART> list disk DISKPART> select disk 2 DISKPART> clean DISKPART> list disk DISKPART> select disk 2 DISKPART> clean DISKPART> exit

Edit: If using the above commands to fix your own flash drive, ensure that you are using the correct drive number (which is shown by the list disk output).

stevencliff on Jan 28, 2018