Corrupted USB flash drive, cannot initialise or mount

disk-utilityusb

I have a USB flash drive which seems to be very corrupted. I didn't have any important files on it so I'm not trying to recover files, I just want to get the drive working again. First, whenever I insert the drive, I get this window.
enter image description here
I press initialize... and I go into Disk Utility.
However, Disk Utility says the USB drive is still unmounted.
enter image description here
As you can see I cannot press mount at all.
Erasing gives me this error.

Erase process has failed. Press Done to continue.

Unmounting disk
Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed.
Operation failed...

Help would be very appreciated. Is this drive broken or can I bring it back to life? 🙂

Best Answer

You could likely get a 3rd party disk repair utility (Diskwarrior, etc.) but you might be throwing good $ after bad, especially considering the cost of thumb drives these days.

If you have access to a PC you could try formatting it on that. If that fails, toss it.

But really it sounds like the drive is toast.