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
Answer
It sounds like a hardware problem. Your question implies you can still mount the remaining partition on Linux. Do that, and grab a copy of all your data because the drive will quite probably fail any minute now.
You can literally buy a new 1GB drive for $7 (US), so I'd say your best bet is to simply replace it rather than hope it won't degrade further.
If the device contained sensitive information, be sure to dispose of it properly: use thermite, or an industrial-strength office shredder.
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