Can't remove write protection on flash drive

[PotatOS - Andrew]

Hello LTT, I have a bit of a dilemma for you.  A while back I was flashing Chromium OS onto a flash drive but (stupidly) managed to unplug the drive before it was done.  Thus, the drive is corrupted.  I can access and view the drive, however it is empty.  The drive is only recognized as being 200MB when it is actually 16GB, and most of all it is now write-protected even though I did nothing to make it appear that way.  There is no physical write-protection switch and no formatting I have tried (Disk Util, Windows formatting, SDFormatter, direct UNIX Terminal erasing) is able to bypass the write protection.  I have tried to edit the StorageDevicePolicies/WriteProtect registry key but I can't find it.  Is there any way I can bypass this protection so I can format it and hopefully be able to use it?  Right now I think I've bricked it but if anyone has suggestions I'll definitely try them.  Thanks!

[TheKDub]

Damn, last time I had something like that happen to a flash drive, I fixed it within like 10 minutes on Linux (Zorin distro)

[PotatOS - Andrew]

Damn, last time I had something like that happen to a flash drive, I fixed it within like 10 minutes on Linux (Zorin distro)

How so?  If I knew how to fix the drive I can get Zorin up and running to do so.

[manikyath]

disk manager?

[TheKDub]

How so?  If I knew how to fix the drive I can get Zorin up and running to do so.

 

It was quite a while ago, give me like 20 mins to install zorin on a VM and figure out the process.

[PotatOS - Andrew]

disk manager?

I wish.  Any attempts to delete partitions give me an "I/O device error"

[PotatOS - Andrew]

It was quite a while ago, give me like 20 mins to install zorin on a VM and figure out the process.

Thanks!  Hope it's not too much trouble.

[TheKDub]

Thanks!  Hope it's not too much trouble.

 

Alright, this should be it:

 

1. Open the start menu (in zorin)

2. Click Accessories

3. Click Disks

 

It should be in the list of devices.

4. Select the flash drive

Over on the left side of the disks window

5. Click the two little gears (located under the "Volumes" area, around the middle of the window)

6. Click Format (Erase - Don't overwrite existing data (Quick), Type - compatible with all systems and devices (FAT), Name - Whatever you want.)

7. Click Format

 

That should work, if not, let me know and I'll look a little deeper into it.

 

You might just be able to edit the partitions of the drive to fix it.

6. Click Edit Partition

From there on, you'll have to figure it out; because I'm using it on a virtual machine, my flash drive doesn't show up in it, so I can't go through the process on it. (even though it's not even the one I needed to fix lol)

[MaximumUtmost]

Don't know if Linux will be your surefire answer here.

Just earlier today, I took the SD card from a 3DS, and in one lock mode, it was detected on my Xubuntu 15.10 laptop's SD card reader, and was fully write-enabled: while on the 3DS, it was write-protected.  When I flipped the lock switch, it was the opposite: it was seen as write-protected on the 3DS, while on the laptop, it wasn't even detected.  Though the two being switched, I believe, has something to do with the orientation of the card and reader of both devices being upside-down, in comparison.

Not sure, though; a physical switch was involved, but I can only imagine that in your case, the flash drive is logically seen as write-protected by (maybe) all devices.

 

Could be worth it, though, checking out what would happen in Zorin, or any other Distro.

[MaximumUtmost]

Sidenote: in a VM, I'm almost completely positive you wouldn't be able to do anything else you could've already been able to do in, what I imagine you use being, Windows.

 

Assuming you're using a VM at all.

[HPWebcamAble]

It's possible that the flash drive is dying, if none of the other ideas here work.

[PotatOS - Andrew]

It's possible that the flash drive is dying, if none of the other ideas here work.

That was my first guess, as it was probably corrupted.  I'm going to try Zorin later today, though,