[tlug] PC Card Slot memory suddenly unusable. "invalid block device"

[David Riggs <dariggs@example.com>]

I use a Compact Flash memory card in my PC Card slot for backup. Its 
been working fine in my Toshiba laptop running Debian/Sarge since I 
installed in a few months ago.

I absent mindedly ejected it yesterday without umount (had not used it 
in 24 hours and thought it was not mounted). Now no matter what I do, 
including rebooting, all I can get from it is "invalid block device". 
Cannot even mkfs or fdisk on it.

Under WinXP the data is there, readable and writable.

Isn't there any way of recovering? Can it be that I cannot even format 
this thing?

Thanks,

David Riggs, Kyoto

fstab entry

/dev/hde1        /flash  auto    rw,user,uid=david,gid=david,mode=0777 
0    0