How to force a USB disk to format?

Question

I can't seem to get my USB drive to format anymore or be recognized by the file system (including gparted). How do I just wipe the whole thing and start over!?

dmesg

[ 5036.408102] usb 2-3: new high-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-pci
[ 5036.541307] usb 2-3: New USB device found, idVendor=14cd, idProduct=125a
[ 5036.541317] usb 2-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=3, SerialNumber=2
[ 5036.541324] usb 2-3: Product: Mass Storage Device
[ 5036.541329] usb 2-3: Manufacturer: Generic
[ 5036.541335] usb 2-3: SerialNumber: 812520090519
[ 5036.542113] scsi7 : usb-storage 2-3:1.0
[ 5037.540969] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access     USB Mass Storage Device        PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 5037.543899] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 5037.545946] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

fdisk

$ sudo fdisk /dev/sd
sda   sda1  sda2  sda3  sda5  sda6  sdb 
$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
fdisk: unable to open /dev/sdb: No medium found

dd

$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
dd: opening ‘/dev/sdb’: No medium found

Solution

It looks like reading from the NVRAM chip in the flash drive has failed, or the controller on the flash drive failed. Time to buy a new drive.

Comments

[Xavierjazz]

It seems to be that it is finished and cannot be used any more.

[terdon]

Is it making any weird sounds? Can you hear the heads moving? I guess smartctl /dev/sdb doesn't work either?

[Eric Fossum]

It's a micro SD card and has no palette

[Ifch0o1]

If you still have this problem look at this: superuser.com/a/974426/289479

[Eric Fossum]

Nooooooooo!!!!! Any way to check?

[Mat Carlson]

Try to access or format it on another computer. You could have a permissions issue, but I kind of doubt that. They are cheap enough that it's not worth putting too much effort into it. Amazon had some MicroSDs on sale - 16gb for ~$8, 32gb for ~$18 (USD).

[Eric Fossum]

Turns out it was the reader had failed. At a couple bucks, everyone should have a spare.