ry to check the List fixed (non flash) or unpartitioned USB disks (v1.3.4 or earlier)/List USB Hard Drives (v1.4.0 or later) option in the advanced options.
Alternatively, you can simply hit Alt-F. Note however that formatting non-flash USB drives, such as USB HDDs, is not officially supported for now. Use at your own risks!
No, it didn't. While you may not be familiar with USB formatting operations, you should understand the following: even intentionally, it is extremely difficult for software to damage hardware, and it is even more difficult unintentionally. If you ask anyone with knowledge of what really goes on behind the scenes, they'll tell you that an application such as Rufus, that uses low-level access to partition, format, or test bad blocks, simply does not have the ability to damage USB hardware. This is because, unlike what Hollywood likes to pretend, there really doesn't exist a set of magic commands that makes hardware self-destruct, and even when governments try to do it (in the form of the Stuxnet virus for instance) they have to invest years and millions of dollars in planning just to target a very specific type of hardware controller (For reference, USB flash drives from different manufacturers tend to use completely different hardware controllers internally, with a completely different proprietary command set).
This is a generic top-level error which can happen for many reasons. You will need to look at the log to determine the actual error, which may be some of the ones listed below: