On 07/04/2019 20:19, R D S wrote:
I pulled a pendrive out of our Humax Freesat box, rolled my eyes as
usual at the remove safely error popup.

Plugged it into laptop (Ubuntu) though, heard the usual noise as if it
had been recognised but it isn't visible in files.

Gparted doesn't seem to see it.

Smartmon says "Read device identity failed".

Is it knackered?

Could be, but more likely just corrupted. You can find low-level format
tools that may make it useable again. I used one a few years ago after a
stick became unuseable following using it for loading a bootloader and
firmware onto a satellite box.

The software that wrote the bootloader installation program to the stick
presumably used some dedicated and non-standard low level writes and
afterwards it could not have partitions adjusted or existing ones (high
level) formatted under Windows.

Unfortunately I can't remember which tool I used.

SteveW