How can I force a format of an external HDD that Gparted and Disk Utility can't see?

Question

My Seagate 500 GB external HDD stopped working few days ago for unknown reasons. I don't really care about the data on it anymore. I just want it to work properly again but I cant format it in Gparted or Disk Utility. In fact, I can't even see my drive in both places. I get this error when I connect it via USB:

Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/sourabh/Backup: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sdb1" "/media/sourabh/Backup"' exited with non-zero exit status 13: The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0).
The file system wasn't safely closed on Windows. Fixing.
ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g. /dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation for more details.
Failed to sync device /dev/sdb1: Input/output error
Failed to close volume /dev/sdb1: Input/output error

How can I force format this drive?

Solution

GParted or KDE Partition Manager require an unmounted drive to operate. Given your system is detecting the drive, but refusing to mount it, you should be able to select Device, New Partition Table after selecting the correct device in either partition manager and clear everything up in about one minute, plus the time it takes to create the new filesystem.

Comments

[Rinzwind]

"In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows twice". You need to fix the errors on the disc from within Windows before you can mount it.

[Sourabh]

I did try that, as advised on some other forum, but it didn't work. Ubuntu Disks says Reallocated Sector Count: failing.

[Sourabh]

fdisk -l | grep '^Disk' does nothing.

[Marilou]

@ Sourabh: should be a shortened list of fdisk -l where only the lines beginning "Disk" are listed, so try it without grep. Search for line looking like Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes , maybe your localization calls disk differently...

[Sourabh]

Yes I even tried fdisk -l but it didn't do anything either. I even tried seatools software but even that was unable to detect my drive. I guess my drive's really dead

[Marilou]

Yes, it is possible... check the cables, small chance, but most common reason... do the Bios see the harddisk?