Hi everyone I have a problem reformatting my USB drive. Its showing this error message whenever I tried to reformat it using gparted:

Parted 0.11.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid

Libparted 2.3
Format /dev/sdb1 as ntfs  00:00:01    ( ERROR )

calibrate /dev/sdb1  00:00:01    ( SUCCESS )

path: /dev/sdb1
start: 22,768
end: 31,248,383
size: 31,225,616 (14.89 GiB)
set partition type on /dev/sdb1  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
libparted messages    ( INFO )


Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Can't write to /dev/sdb, because it is opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.

Reason I wanted to reformat it is because it just suddenly stopped working when I was transferring files from my pc and also it erased every content that was saved in the usb drive. I tried various tutorials on the net regarding this however I can't find a solution on how to make a usb drive change its read-only property to read-write or anything that would enable me to reformat this usb drive. I have also checked this link format read-only USB drive but this one doesn't have a solution. Also am attempting to do this on Ubuntu 12.04.