Unidade Externa Reconhecida por 'ls dev' mas “nenhuma mídia encontrada”

Question

Estou tentando destruir um disco rígido externo antigo usando o Linux Mint 17 (uma distro baseada no Ubuntu) e um adaptador Vantec IDE / SATA para USB 3.0.

O sistema reconhece a presença do drive. Aqui está a saída relevante do lshw:

 *-scsi:1
      physical id: 2
      bus info: usb@3:1
      logical name: scsi3
      capabilities: emulated scsi-host
      configuration: driver=usb-storage
    *-disk
         description: SCSI Disk
         physical id: 0.0.0
         bus info: scsi@3:0.0.0
         logical name: /dev/sdb
         configuration: sectorsize=512

No entanto, quando tento acessar a unidade, recebo um erro "sem mídia encontrada":

> sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
fdisk: unable to open /dev/sdb: No medium found

> sudo dd count=1 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
dd: failed to open ‘/dev/sdb’: No medium found

A saída de montagem

é:

Toshiba-Satellite-A105 ~ # mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=1006720k,nr_inodes=209871,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=205272k,mode=755)
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd,nsroot=/)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/pids type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,pids,release_agent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.pids,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset,clone_children,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,hugetlb,release_agent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.hugetlb,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio,nsroot=/)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event,release_agent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.perf_event,nsroot=/)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=37,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
tracefs on /sys/kernel/debug/tracing type tracefs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda5 on /home type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sda6 on /opt type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,relatime)
cgmfs on /run/cgmanager/fs type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=100k,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=205272k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)

Aqui está a saída do smartctl:

Toshiba-Satellite-A105 ~ # sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [i686-linux-4.4.0-21-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Read Device Identity failed: empty IDENTIFY data

A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
Toshiba-Satellite-A105 ~ # sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb -T permissive
smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [i686-linux-4.4.0-21-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Read Device Identity failed: empty IDENTIFY data

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     [No Information Found]
Serial Number:    [No Information Found]
Firmware Version: [No Information Found]
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   [No Information Found]
Local Time is:    Tue Apr 18 11:29:22 2017 EDT
SMART support is: Ambiguous - ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE words 82-83 don't show if SMART supported.
SMART support is: Ambiguous - ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE words 85-87 don't show if SMART is enabled.
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

Como posso consertar isso? Agradecemos antecipadamente.