0
1
I have a 8 GB Sandisk USB flash drive. Recently it became write protected somehow. So I searched in Google and I tried to remove the write protection through almost all the methods I found. Unfortunately nothing worked.
So I decided to try some other ways. Some said that flashing the USB flash drive will solve the problem. But I don't know how. So how can it be done ? What I meant by flashing is to repair the USB flash drive by softwaring it again. Or, is there any way to do a factory reset to it ?
TomJ
Posted 2014-04-22T16:31:21.497
Reputation: 713
Your drive became writeable? Or read-only? – summea – 2014-04-22T16:34:23.977
@summea Write protected actually. – TomJ – 2014-04-22T16:47:30.413
Your question is not clear. Please rephraise your question so what you want to know is crystal clar. Update your question its a living breathing question. – Ramhound – 2014-04-22T16:50:34.013
After you back up your files on the USB drive, have you tried reformatting the drive? – summea – 2014-04-22T17:04:58.467
@summea Yeah. Several times. Formatting won't happen in it. When ever I tried to format, it says 'The USB flash drive is write protected'. – TomJ – 2014-04-22T17:10:19.027
Ah; sometimes companies make some sort of application to do more of a "factory reset" for flash drives (or memory cards) but I haven't been able to find something like that for SanDisk (at the moment, at least.) Does anything on this other thread help? It may be time to invest in a new flash drive, too...
– summea – 2014-04-22T17:17:48.8174Could this be a case of the drive reaching the end of it's life and locking itself? Flash devices have limited write cycles, a well designed one will go read only when it's out of anticipated life to avoid losing data when a cell actually fails. – Loren Pechtel – 2014-04-22T17:18:01.330
@summea I already tried that. – TomJ – 2014-04-22T17:21:00.673
@LorenPechtel Are you saying that its time to buy a new one ? – TomJ – 2014-04-22T17:22:19.917
1Yes, he is saying that. – frlan – 2014-04-22T18:48:07.423
Did you try reformatting it in Windows Disk Management? – AdmiralThrawn – 2014-04-30T05:13:01.380
@AdmiralAdama Yes, I did. Can you help me ? – TomJ – 2014-04-30T05:43:05.180
1@LorenPechtel You said that flash drives have write cycles. Is it possible to reset it ? – TomJ – 2014-05-04T09:15:52.290
1@Tom: You wouldn't want to. The write counter is a safety device--it's much better to have the drive go read only than corrupt data when the cell burns out. – Loren Pechtel – 2014-05-04T15:20:15.300