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Pheonix
Asked: 2015-08-20 09:26:37 +0800 CST

Reformat USB flash drive marked "Read Only"

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I have a 32GB USB 3.0 Flash drive marked "Read Only". It is formatted FAT32. I don't know when it was formatted as such, and I need to reformat it.

I've attempted using Windows' Diskpart to mark it writeable, and removing the partition with Gparted, shred, and dosfsck.

The drive is roughly 2 years old and I've used it for a lot of Live USB boot disc creation, so it may be dying, although I thought flash drives were pretty resilient.

My next course of action will be to set up DBAN and try to nuke it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Every attempt I've made ended in an error akin to "Cannot write to this partition".

EDIT: If I remember correctly, I was transferring files to it when it suddenly locked up. So it may very well be done-for.

partitioning

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    At least a SanDisk USB flash device turns into persistent "Read only"-mode when it has detected internal trouble that might be a cause for imminent failure.

    There is only one remedy:
    Backup any data immediately and
    Replace the flash memory as soon as possible to avoid trouble.

    I have experienced this just recently, the very first flash device EVER to die for me; a SanDisk Ultra, USB 3.0.

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