Remove write protect from Sandisk Cruzer blade 16 GB?

Question

1 Month Old Sandisk Cruzer Blade 16 GB. Became write protect while trying to copy 13 GB data from a friend's computer using Windows 7. Suddenly transfer stopped because of write protect. Did scan for malicious viruses in my computer running on Windows 10. Windows Defender finds worms and Trojan win32 and destroys it. But its back. Not able to format the usb because of write protect. Did 1. Quick format 2. in regedit added value of WriteProtect in StorageDevicePolicies to 0 3. There is no way for gpedit.msc since my system is running on Windows 10 Home edition 3. In disk part, able to make attributes as readonly but not able to clean because of write protect 4. in Disk management no option to format at all 5. Tried using third party softwares like usbfixer, HDD low level format tool and HD Tune Nothing worked because of write protect.

How to remove write protect?

Answer 1

For this kind of stuff I usually prefer Linux to Windows, because (IMHO) it has more powerful tools, and usually give less headaches.

I highly recommend you to use GParted. It comes with a live version (here's how to set it up), in case you don't have any Linux distro installed on your PC. If you already have one, you can just try this in a terminal:

# Install GParted if it isn't in your system yet
sudo apt-get install gparted
# Run GParted with root privileges
sudo gparted

Once it's open, you'll just have to try to format your USB drive. Here's a step-by step tutorial on how to do it. Obviously, this will wipe all your data.

Keep in mind that sometimes pendrives and such get permanently corrrupted (specially if there has been malware involved), and in those cases there's nothing you can do. However, don't consider it's dead before giving GParted a try.