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My USB drive has broken quite spectacularly.
What has happened is that I used to have one, 1GB pendrive. Now, apparently, I have two physical disks (yes, physical disks not partitions - linux and windows mount them like that), one 982MB in in size, and still very much alive, and another -512B (yes, it's negative!) in size. It wouldn't mind, but windows PCs go beserk when you give them a drive with a negative size. I'm looking for a way to wipe the whole drive (it's a USB pendrive), and i'm very happy to do it physically if there is a way to do it with a magnet or something.
None of the usual methods will work, I've tried:
All of the $ fdisk methods
$ sudo shred
> DISKPART on windows
GParted
All of the $ dd methods
Are you able to use the negative-size drive? – kinokijuf – 2012-01-30T18:28:28.940
1so you're actually getting separate /dev/sda and /dev/sdb under linux? or are you getting /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1? the former are "separate physical disks", the latter are separate partitions. – quack quixote – 2009-11-09T18:21:09.020
3if they are showing up as separate physical disks, i'd guess it's a serious bug in the chipset/firmware of the thumbdrive. (does it happen on other computers too?) if so, destroy it (with thermite, or a hammer) and get a new one. – quack quixote – 2009-11-09T18:22:41.527
2>
Yes, it shows up as /dev/sdb /dev/sdc, and yes it happens on other computers – Joe – 2009-11-09T20:44:48.527