USB Drive Write Protect

[#1]

I had a 32GB USB drive which had quite a bit of stuff on it.

A few days ago I saved a text file to it.

Yesterday I went to remove the text file and was told the device had Write Protect enabled.

In the properties on various files, write protect was enabled and wouldn't disable.

A quick Google and I tried the various 'solutions' on offer such as the Diskpart method and Regedit with no success.

I even loaded a copy of Ubuntu but couldn't disable Write Protect on the drive.

Formatting inevitably wouldn't work either.

As I had a backup of most files I took the drive outside and introduced it to a hammer and the bin and a replacement ordered.

Maybe the drive had become faulty.

Has anyone else come across this situation and a solution in case it happens to the replacement.

[#2]

@Strat, some disk have a tiny switch on them to enable Write Protect, you've not inadvertently moved this while handling the device have you?

[#3]

Did you try this?  https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/format-usb-flash-drive-using-cmd.html

[#4]

@Anonymous When I took it apart to destroy it I examined it carefully for such a switch and none was found.

@Baldrick1 Yes I did and received 'Clean successful" and "Write Protect disable success" messages.

The drive contents were unchanged.

Edit: I had selected the correct drive.

Edit 2: Thanks guys (where are my manners)

[#5]

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@Strat wrote:

I had a 32GB USB drive which had quite a bit of stuff on it.

took the drive outside and introduced it to a hammer and the bin and a replacement ordered.

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Did you have to beat it to death? 

if you could not access the information, (as it was "write protected".) then it `s quite feasible that nobody else could ...

  or was there something REALLY dodgy on there, that the taxman, ( and others ) should not see  ? ? 

[#6]

write protected, not read protected

[#7]

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@Strat wrote:

Has anyone else come across this situation and a solution in case it happens to the replacement.

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I just wondered if you somehow manage to lose (part) ownership of the drive, hence the read only part. i.e. properties, security. When I've swapped out hard drives from one computer to another, sometimes I've had to go into the above and then on to through the Advance button and work my way through permissions etc to regain full control of the disk.

Just a thought.

[#8]

Thanks @idonno, I did a detailed check of permissions as part of my investigation.

[#9]

Did you do lots of deletes/adds - causing the OS to create a hidden "Trash can" on the drive?

So that most of the disk space, was in fact used, causing a disk full condition?

[#10]

I’ve had this issue for a usb Kingston pen drive. Don’t really know why it locks up but the only way to get it back working is to flash the firmware using a rather rare software hack. You have to make sure you get the right flasher for the chipset in the pen drive, otherwise you’ve got a key ring (assuming it’s got a key loop hole).

[#11]

I had a Transcend 64GB USB stick a couple of years ago which 'failed'.  Windows couldn't access it properly, DiskPart said there was 'no media' present when trying to perform operations on it, and I had no success with several third party programs.  As it was still under Transcends 3(?) year warranty I decided to return it, making a note of its serial number before doing so.

A short time later I received a replacement from Transcend, or so I thought as it was in an 'as new' blister-pack and card.  When I checked the serial number it was the one I had returned, but now working properly.  Checking the capacity it was slightly smaller than before so I'm not sure what they did to it to reduce it, perhaps something similar to marking certain sectors of the drive as bad/unuseable as with HDDs.