The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    USB flash drive magically "write protects"

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by 133794m3r, Nov 27, 2009.

  1. 133794m3r

    133794m3r Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    262
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I believe it's broken now. As nothing i do seems to fix it. It's completely write protected. In ubuntu after some work i was able to get a couple of the files off of there. The most important ones so now i'm completely sure that's it's done something to itself.

    I've never write protected it and it just "magically" did it to itself. I've tried turning write protect off using regedit and to no avail. I believe it's completely dead in the water. Anyone out there have a solution for this besides literally just saying it's dead?
     
    133794m3r, Nov 27, 2009
    #1
  2. timtravel42

    timtravel42 Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    827
    Messages:
    2,004
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    56
    did you try completely reformatting the drive
     
    timtravel42, Nov 27, 2009
    #2
  3. 133794m3r

    133794m3r Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    262
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    how can i reformat if it says "error this drive is write protected"?

    It's kind of impossible as i see it. Never knew i could somehow circumvent write protection to reformat something that's giving me a write protected errors left and right. I tried ubuntu's gparted doesn't work, and windows things. Neither one can reformat. Can't do a disk check in windows either.
     
    133794m3r, Nov 28, 2009
    #3
  4. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

    Reputations:
    2,674
    Messages:
    6,039
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    If unbutu gparted doesn't work then it sounds like the drive is PHYSICALLY locked. Does it have a small slide switch on it somehere???

    Gary
     
    ScuderiaConchiglia, Nov 28, 2009
    #4
  5. 133794m3r

    133794m3r Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    262
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Well it didn't work back in ubuntu 8.04 LTS which was the only cd i could find with ubuntu on it. Since windows 7 wiped out my grub and i've yet to have a reason to try to but back into it. Going to try to redownload the iso and check it there. Get grub back too.
     
    133794m3r, Nov 28, 2009
    #5