Heavily corrupted flash drive - GParted not able to delete partition

Layback Bear, this happened all of a sudden - I'm a DJ and I download songs on my desktop machine, and then I use the flashdrive to play them through my software on my laptop. On Sunday I was downloading music on my machine, put them on my drive, unmounted the drive, pulled it out, moved 2 feet, put it into the laptop, then when I tried to open my software, it was taking a very long time and it wasn't recognizing my drive, so I pulled it out (impatiently) and when I tried to plug it back in, the laptop said that it needs to be formatted before being used again. I was handling it the whole time it went from non-working to working...

Wow, I didn't even think to look up utilities from the manufacturer... That would have helped:

So HP Disk Storage didn't work - but I figured it out.

As you can read in the USB Product Reviews, this is a common issue with my specific flash drive. It turns out that Teamgroup has this problem so often that they made a specific utility to fix it. I downloaded, ran it, and it worked!

From a curiousity standpoint, why is it that these USB drives lock up like this? Can anyone shoot me a link where I can read about what causes this to happen to where no traditional wiping utility will be able to wipe it and how a manufacturer can make a program specifically for fixing the problem? What does the manufacturer utility do that DBAN, for example can't? This has really piqued my interest...

Anyway, thank you to all who lent a hand, I'll make sure to check manufacturers' websites first thing next time!

That's good to know. Will keep it in mind. I would think the manufacturer's utility accesses formatting functions in the firmware that are forbidden to everyone else.

Buy only reputed brands and that from reputed vendors. Don't buy something because it is cheap. Always do a google search on any item you want to buy and read user reviews on various vendor sites.Check the manufacturer's website for specs/services/support, even before you buy the product.. Look for easy returns within warranty period without burning a hole in your pocket ( In this case it proclaims lifetime warranty for parts and labour.) Your money, your concern.:)