Disk Utility takes forever to erase flash drive

I posted a thread this morning, but it seems to have disappeared.

Anyways, I'm trying to partition a USB flash drive with Disk Utility per these instructions, but when I hit "erase", the status bar just hangs. I actually tried leaving my MacBook running overnight, but when I came to check up this morning, no progress had been made.

I was finally forced to quit Disk Utility, which has now rendered my only 8GB flash drive unusable. I'd appreciate any help on this matter.

G'day and welcome top the forums.

Flash drives frequently fail even when new. Connect it up and see if anything is on it.

Nothing on it as far as I can remember. When I insert it, I get a "not readable by this computer" message, presumably because I quit Disk Utility while it was in the middle of a (frozen) operation.