Tech Help Request: How to Remove Write Protection from a Flash Drive

Taran

Taran

New Member
The title pretty much says it all: How to Remove Write Protection from a Flash Drive

I've tried to format the drive, but its blocked due to write protection. I've tried to research how to turn it off (Internet), but nothing I researched worked. Halfway through a copy of some files, my wife's computer turned on the 'write protection' and I don't know how to turn it off. I was not physically touching the drive at the time, so I know for certain there's no "switch" to turn on/off on the USB Flash Drive itself.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Have you tried formatting this way?

How to remove a write protection from your USB memory Stick if there is no Write protection ON or OFF button or tab:

1. Shutdown your computer or laptop
2. Insert USB Memory Stick into your laptop or Computer
3. Turn on computer and then immediately start pressing (F8) key then Advanced Boot Options screen will come up
4. Select Safe Mode with Command Prompt
5. After loading files if your USB Memory Stick drive letter is (G) for example then write as
6. C:\windows\system32>G: and press enter
7. G:\>format G: and press enter
8. If ask you (Y/N) then press (Y) and press enter
9. Now a full format will start which remove write protection from USB Memory Stick.
Click to expand...
 
Which OS? Do you have any issues copying all the files to a location other than the flash drive? Is it filling up the drive?
 
The laptop is a Windows 7 64-bit. Never had any problems before. It has about a 15G capacity. I had 1G of files successfully put on it (four big files). When it was copying for the fifth time (I was doing one file at a time), it stopped in the middle and quit. Then it kept telling me I couldn't copy any more files over because it was 'write protected.' And it has plenty of room.

And no, I have not tried that other format method.
 
Are you able to copy that problem file elsewhere? THe reason I ask is that it's possible the error is originating with the file, and not the thumb drive. I've had files, even in Win7, that I simply can't delete for some strange reason. If it is definitely the thumb drive, I'd definitely recommend NOT relying on it for any sort of back-up...could be bac sectors or any number of wonky problems.

Another random question - is there anything weird with the file name? Sometimes this can rarely cause an issue - such as having a folder name with a space after it, special characters, etc. Are you able to rename the file and does that help?
 
No weird file names.

I removed the flash drive from the laptop and plugged it into the desktop to try to extract the files that I had successfully copied. Then I tried to format it with the desktop, but again, it was 'write protected'. So its definitely something with the flash drive and not the laptop.

I'm beginning to suspect that the flash drive itself may have gone bad.
 
I think you're correct, unfortunately. There is no reason you should be getting those permissions errors putting files in the exact same place.

Two things you might check:
1) It's formatted FAT32 and shows available space, no?
2) One last ditch effort might be that you have some bad sectors, that you can flag and move on. In Windows 7: Computer -> Right click drive, Properties -> Tools tab, Error-checking: Check now...

The default scan is pretty quick, but if you are scanning for bad sectors, expect it to take a while.

All in all, probably not worth all the effort, and I certainly wouldn't trust that (or any!) flash drive as the only place I had a file backed up.
 
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