Flash Drive Problem (Detected + No Drive Letter + GPT + Read Only)

[turquato]

Hello there,

I am having an issue with my 16GB Kingston flash drive. It is detected using all my devices, however, on disk management it says that the drive is read-only.

Upon using Disk Part it says that the current status of the thumb drive is read only, but, the Read Only attribute is set to OFF or NO.

Could you recommend another method aside from using Disk Part or a program to which I could use to make the drive function normally again.

Many thanks for the assistance.

UPDATE: here's a screenshot of the drive details
 

[kirashi]

23 minutes ago, turquato said:

Hello there,

I am having an issue with my 16GB Kingston flash drive. It is detected using all my devices, however, on disk management it says that the drive is read-only.

Upon using Disk Part it says that the current status of the thumb drive is read only, but, the Read Only attribute is set to OFF or NO.

Could you recommend another method aside from using Disk Part or a program to which I could use to make the drive function normally again.

Many thanks for the assistance.

Assuming you've copied everything off the drive you need, I'd give it the old diskpart clean 1-2 heave ho.

https://www.howtogeek.com/235824/how-to-clean-a-flash-drive-sd-card-or-internal-drive-to-fix-partition-and-capacity-problems/

[DigitalGoat]

1 hour ago, turquato said:

Hello there,

I am having an issue with my 16GB Kingston flash drive. It is detected using all my devices, however, on disk management it says that the drive is read-only.

Upon using Disk Part it says that the current status of the thumb drive is read only, but, the Read Only attribute is set to OFF or NO.

Could you recommend another method aside from using Disk Part or a program to which I could use to make the drive function normally again.

Many thanks for the assistance.

A lot of flash drives will lock into a read only state upon failure of the storage chips based on tests run by the firmware for errors when reading/ writing, the purpose is to prevent corruption to data and allow you to copy the files off the drive. If the read only attribute is set to OFF but the drive is read only then the hardware lock is active.

If not the above then maybe the flash drive has a physical switch to turn read only on/ off (but my money is on a failing drive).

[turquato]

1 hour ago, kirashi said:

Assuming you've copied everything off the drive you need, I'd give it the old diskpart clean 1-2 heave ho.

https://www.howtogeek.com/235824/how-to-clean-a-flash-drive-sd-card-or-internal-drive-to-fix-partition-and-capacity-problems/

Hi,
 

Thanks for helping out. I've followed your suggested fix but unfortunately it did not fix the problem.

I've included the screenshot of the process and Disk Parts reply.
 

[kirashi]

11 minutes ago, turquato said:

Hi,
 

Thanks for helping out. I've followed your suggested fix but unfortunately it did not fix the problem.

I've included the screenshot of the process and Disk Parts reply.
 

"I/O device error" usually means something is wrong with the device's controller or NAND flash memory. When it comes to electronic storage mediums like SSD's or USB drives, they usually straight up die when their time comes. If you get the same result trying to diskpart clean the drive on multiple computers, chances are the drive is kaput.

[turquato]

48 minutes ago, DigitalGoat said:

A lot of flash drives will lock into a read only state upon failure of the storage chips based on tests run by the firmware for errors when reading/ writing, the purpose is to prevent corruption to data and allow you to copy the files off the drive. If the read only attribute is set to OFF but the drive is read only then the hardware lock is active.

If not the above then maybe the flash drive has a physical switch to turn read only on/ off (but my money is on a failing drive).

Hi,

Thank you for the reply.

Unfortunately this drive does not have a physical on/off switch for the read/write function that most SD Cards have.

I get your point about the data protection measures that are built in that protect files from being corrupted.

If what you say is true, would this be part of that scenario?

[DigitalGoat]

6 hours ago, turquato said:

Hi,

Thank you for the reply.

Unfortunately this drive does not have a physical on/off switch for the read/write function that most SD Cards have.

I get your point about the data protection measures that are built in that protect files from being corrupted.

If what you say is true, would this be part of that scenario?

If all attempts to set read only off by software (Windows, 3rd party apps, Linux etc) fail and there is no hardware read only switch then yes. Best to copy off any data to keep and bin the drive.