Help! How to salvage USB flash disk?

From: Joćo Batista (jbatista_at_mail.desy.de)
Date: 09/16/04 

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 13:25:22 +0100

Gentle posters,

I have a 256M USB 2.0 flash disk, running on Linux 2.4.x under SuSE 8.2.
It always worked fine until a few days ago. The current simptoms are:

1) Takes a *lot* longer to allow access to the device. This includes
   the attempted fdisk to recreate partitions, formatting, event mounting
   the disk.
2) The kernel reports a flood of read errors with dmesg (see below).
3) A *lot* more partitions/disks appear associated with the device. Before,
   only one partition /dev/sda1 appeared for it, now eight disks (/dev/sda
   through /dev/sdh) appear for the flash disk.

I've tried it on other machines, including Windows XP, and it seems
itsomehow got currupted, even though the usbview information seems OK. It
cannot see the partitions, let alone mount appropriately (and quickly as
it used to, it now takes some 4-5 minutes!...).

So my question is:

Is there a way to "reset" the flash disk, so it goes back to recognize a
single /dev/sda disk --- so I can create a new partition and get it back
to normal? Or is it time to give it to my child to play with it? :-)

Thank you in advance for your replies.

LATEST OUTPUT FROM DMESG:
--------- 8< ----------------------------------------------------------

        (...when attaching Flash Disk to computer...)

hub.c: new USB device 00:02.0-1, assigned address 4
WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured
USB Mass Storage device found at 4
Device not ready. Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 08
Info fld=0xa00 (nonstd), Current sd00:00: sns = 70 2
Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x0a 0x00 0x00
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
 sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 unable to read partition table
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
SCSI device sdb: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
 sdb: sdb1 sdb2
SCSI device sdc: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is off
 sdc: sdc1 sdc2
SCSI device sdd: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sdd: Write Protect is off
 sdd: sdd1 sdd2
SCSI device sde: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sde: Write Protect is off
 sde: sde1 sde2
SCSI device sdf: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sdf: Write Protect is off
 sdf: sdf1 sdf2
SCSI device sdg: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sdg: Write Protect is off
 sdg: sdg1 sdg2
SCSI device sdh: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sdh: Write Protect is off
 sdh: sdh1 sdh2
SCSI device sdi: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sdi: Write Protect is off
 sdi: sdi1 sdi2
Device not ready. Make sure there is a disc in the drive.

                (... attempted mount, as it worked before ...)

sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 08
Info fld=0xa00 (nonstd), Current sd00:00: sns = 70 2
Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x0a 0x00 0x00
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
 sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 unable to read partition table
Device not ready. Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 08
Info fld=0xa00 (nonstd), Current sd00:00: sns = 70 2
Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x0a 0x00 0x00
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
 sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 unable to read partition table

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