cannot format usb drive

[albertkao]

Suddenly my 4GB usb thumb drive cannot be formatted by Ubuntu or Windows.
My usb drive does not have any switch on it to make it readonly.

$ sudo mkfs.ext3 -F /dev/sdg1
mke2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
/dev/sdg1: Read-only file system while setting up superblock

[wilee-nilee]

Have you tried gparted in Ubuntu in system-admin-gparted.

Or right clicking on the icon of the thumb and then format.