Cannot reformat flash drive

Question

I have tried to reformat on Ubuntu using gparted, in Windows using their tool, and OSX using Disk Utility. I have also attempted by using the terminal but also failed there.

When I verify disk using Disk Utility, I get the following output:

Verifying volume “REDSTRIPE”    
** /dev/disk2s1    
** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT    
** Phase 2 - Checking Directories    
** Phase 3 - Checking for Orphan Clusters    
168 files, 4507316 KiB free (1126829 clusters)    
MARK FILE SYSTEM CLEAN? no    

***** FILE SYSTEM IS LEFT MARKED AS DIRTY *****   
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.

But I am unable to repair disk.

See OSX examples below:

Answer 1

The diskUtil2.png screen shot says "Writable: No". Some flash USB drives (and maybe all SDHC cards) have a tiny switch on them that allows and disallows writing and may inadvertently get thrown to "read only". Since the switch is small, it is easy to overlook. Since external hard drives don't have such switches, it's easy to forget. I had this happen to me last week with a SDHC card and it drove me bonkers for a couple of minutes until I actually slowed myself down and took the time to look at the card.

Answer 2

Today I tried a "hardware" fix, in the line of answer 1 above: I pulled out my SDHC card, switched the tag disabling writing, switched it back to writable trying to push it all the way. It worked, before was only read on my Mac, and now it's read and write, with no other fix. Just as if the memory card needed to be reset, manually. I just hope this is the ultimate solution to the problem, and will help other users as well.

I don't have Microsoft to test weather this can happen on other platform, but I've tested cards and pen drives. Sometimes the fix was done with Check Disk, some others by unmounting it, mounting it on another Mac (a friend's one), unmounting it and remounting it back to mine.