USB drive suddenly became write protected!

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

I have a SanDIsk Ultra 32 GB USB drive which was working fine since I bought it about two weeks ago. 

I wanted to copy some files to it today but Windows says that the drive is write protected. 

I followed the instructions in this guide but nothing worked.

Any idea on how how I can get it working again? 

Thanks!

 

PS: I don't mind losing all the data stored on it. 

[unknownmiscreant]

Its probably bricked due to being removed mid-write operation or something.

 

I've had this with a USB drive and 2 SD cards. I wouldn't waste your time trying to recover it.

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

3 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

Its probably bricked due to being removed mid-write operation or something.

 

I've had this with a USB drive and 2 SD cards. I wouldn't waste your time trying to recover it.

That's strange. I always "Safely remove" my external drives. 

Well if it's unrecoverable I can't really do anything, maybe I got a bad drive? Cause this is two weeks old. 

[unknownmiscreant]

11 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

That's strange. I always "Safely remove" my external drives. 

Well if it's unrecoverable I can't really do anything, maybe I got a bad drive? Cause this is two weeks old. 

Huh. Never had it happen with one that new. Not sure what might be wrong with it, but I have sunk probably around 2-3 days into dead drive issues. If you don't care about the data on it, buy a new drive or RMA your current one, a decent sandisk drive really should last longer than that, especially if safely ejected. 

 

Are you using it in any faulty ports? As I have a 2tb external drive that randomly reconnects (in known good ports) every now and then. That is most likely condition to induce failure.

 

 

[MrDrWho13]

20 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

That's strange. I always "Safely remove" my external drives. 

Well if it's unrecoverable I can't really do anything, maybe I got a bad drive? Cause this is two weeks old. 

I would return it under warranty

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

4 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

Huh. Never had it happen with one that new. Not sure what might be wrong with it, but I have sunk probably around 2-3 days into dead drive issues. If you don't care about the data on it, buy a new drive or RMA your current one, a decent sandisk drive really should last longer than that, especially if safely ejected. 

 

Are you using it in any faulty ports? As I have a 2tb external drive that randomly reconnects (in known good ports) every now and then. That is most likely condition to induce failure.

 

 

I've tried with different ports. and my other drives work fine on this port too. 

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

3 minutes ago, MrDrWho13 said:

I would return it under warranty

I can't RMA the device, my country isn't listed on their website. So is my only option to just buy another one? 

[MrDrWho13]

1 minute ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

I can't RMA the device, my country isn't listed on their website. So is my only option to just buy another one? 

Where did you buy it from? Pretty sure it's illegal in my country for any reseller to reject a warranty claim if it's not your fault.

[unknownmiscreant]

8 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

I've tried with different ports. and my other drives work fine on this port too. 

I think you've missed the subtlety. I wasn't referring to the device working in a port, I was referring to the port being slightly faulty, and a bump etc would cause one of the connections to be lost. I have a 2tb drive that randomly (no bumps or anything) reconnects every couple of days on every port on every computer I own. No other device does this. If I didn't leave it plugged into my desktop most of the time I wouldn't even know it was faulty. 

 

Just about all the time it works fine, however every couple of days or so a notification "new device connected" pops up.

 

As for the warranty, can you not return it to place of purchase.

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

3 minutes ago, MrDrWho13 said:

Where did you buy it from? Pretty sure it's illegal in my country for any reseller to reject a warranty claim if it's not your fault.

Amazon.in 

3 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

As for the warranty, can you not return it to place of purchase.

So I have no choice but to buy another one I guess

[MrDrWho13]

1 minute ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

Amazon.in 

So I have no choice but to buy another one I guess

I still don't understand the problem. Amazon have been really good with returns in my experience.

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

3 minutes ago, MrDrWho13 said:

I still don't understand the problem. Amazon have been really good with returns in my experience.

Just checked amazon, It's actually been 20 days from purchase and the return window has closed. But I'll try contacting customer care once.  

[unknownmiscreant]

3 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

Amazon.in 

So I have no choice but to buy another one I guess

In my country, you can take a retailer to court over not accepting a legitimate warranty claim. 

 

They are pretty cheap anyway, if its gonna be a pain in the backside, probably not worth your time dealing with it.

 

Also, I would recommend getting a SSD/HDD + USB enclosure rather than USB drives (or reuse an old drive.) They are a fair bit more pricey, but give a much better experience overall. More space, faster maintained transfer, and less risk of data loss. USB drives and SD cards notoriously prone to failure compared to HDDs and SSDs.

 

Just now, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

Just checked amazon, It's actually been 20 days from purchase and the return window has closed. But I'll try contacting customer care once.  

I'd guess that is returns for change of mind, not faulty products. You could probably return it directly to sandisk, but for the cost of a new drive it probably isn't worth your time.

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

5 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

In my country, you can take a retailer to court over not accepting a legitimate warranty claim. 

 

They are pretty cheap anyway, if its gonna be a pain in the backside, probably not worth your time dealing with it.

 

Also, I would recommend getting a SSD/HDD + USB enclosure rather than USB drives (or reuse an old drive.) They are a fair bit more pricey, but give a much better experience overall. More space, faster maintained transfer, and less risk of data loss. USB drives and SD cards notoriously prone to failure compared to HDDs and SSDs.

 

I'd guess that is returns for change of mind, not faulty products. You could probably return it directly to sandisk, but for the cost of a new drive it probably isn't worth your time.

Oh well, I'll need to destroy this drive then, I had stored a backup of my passwords on it. 

@MrDrWho13 

 

Anyways, thanks guys!

[MrDrWho13]

1 minute ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

Oh well, I'll need to destroy this drive then, I had stored a backup of my passwords on it. 

@MrDrWho13 

 

Anyways, thanks guys!

You... wat

If you're storing passwords, use a password manager like lastpass so they're encrypted. Plaintext passwords are not good.

[unknownmiscreant]

Just now, MrDrWho13 said:

You... wat

If you're storing passwords, use a password manager like lastpass so they're encrypted. Plaintext passwords are not good.

Well until someone hacks last pass......

 

If the drive isn't connected to a computer 24/7 I would trust it more than some password manager.

 

But for me, I remember all my passwords, there aren't written down anywhere, and yes they are all different. I save the few I use daily in chrome.

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

1 minute ago, MrDrWho13 said:

You... wat

If you're storing passwords, use a password manager like lastpass so they're encrypted. Plaintext passwords are not good.

Calm down, I just had stuff like Steam, Origin recovery and backups codes in it and I had encrypted it using 7 Zip.

And I've been using Lastpass from a couple of days, and it was when I wanted to transfer these to Lastpass and delete them from the drive that I noticed the problem. 

 

 

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

8 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

Well until someone hacks last pass......

 

If the drive isn't connected to a computer 24/7 I would trust it more than some password manager.

 

But for me, I remember all my passwords, there aren't written down anywhere, and yes they are all different. I save the few I use daily in chrome.

Now that you mentioned it, I do use my own password on important accounts like Google, Microsoft, amazon ..... and for the rest I use Lastpass. 

[unknownmiscreant]

1 minute ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

Now that you mentioned it, I do use my own password on important accounts like my Google, Microsoft, amazon ..... accounts and for the rest I use Lastpass. 

Yeah, fair enough. But most of mine are fairly important to either me or my business, so since I can remember them, I will likely never bother with password managers. Although you're right, I do have a plethora of stupid accounts I never wanted in the first place. 

 

@MrDrWho13 A somewhat unique password management technique I once saw was someone who always set their passwords to random keyboard mash and reset them (different keyboard mash) every time they wanted to login. Seems mad on the surface, but its very hard for hackers to intercept emails, the reset links expire after single use and the password is just about unguessable, with a different password for each site, all of which bearing no relation to you or anything so if hackers manage to steal unhashed passwords, its (relatively) useless to them.

 

For recovery codes, I write them on bits of paper and hide them round my house.