How to erase and merge partitions to Ubuntu start up USB drive?

Question

I have a USB start up drive with 2 partitions. How can I erase them? I cannot.

Answer 1

The following will completely erase the entire USB stick, so backup your data first.

1. unmount the USB stick by right-clicking on it
2. Start gparted and in the top right cornet, take the correct USB drive /dev/XdY where X and Y denoninate your USB stick.
3. Go to device and click Create partition table and take msdos if you want to be able to boot the USB on BIO machines and take gpt for all other use cases
4. Create at least one partition and format it

If any of the above steps fail,

1. Check whether the USB stick is write-protected by a switch
2. Use mkusb to erase the first 1 Mbyte of data.

If that also fails, your USB stick has a hardware problem. Please replace it.

Answer 2

Merging Partitions

Rsync and Grsync, (Graphical Rsync) are tools for copying and syncing partitions.

Rsync and Grsync are available from Ubuntu Software.

The basics for using Rsync and Grsync are beyond the scope of this answer.