write protected pen drive

Formatting erases nothing. Wipe the stick with Diskpart Clean Command.

Then format in Disk mgmt with the stick's native format, give a drive letter and label.

If you want to make it a bootable installer use Universal USB Installer

kado897 said:

Silly question maybe. Does the stick have a write protect switch?

I was thinking that myself. I vaguely remember seeing a few drives with write-protection switches.

1. How old is your pen drive? How frequently have you used it?

2. Is it still under warranty?

Now some theory.

The flash controller in a pendrive works in the background constantly replacing the defective cells with reserve cells in its normal lifetime of 100000 (plus or minus) write cycles. When all reserve cells are consumed the flash controller rejects all write accesses - write protected - end of life.

(One may think he had never ever filled the full capacity at anytime and therefore that all the writes were at specific blocks at the beginning or end leaving the others in the virgin state. It is not so. The flash controller spreads writes over all physical blocks during its repeated usage so that all cells wear out - more aptly age - equally.)

It should be comforting to know this if indeed your pendrive has reached its end.:)

Anyway do all that you can, especially what gregrocker had suggested - zeroing all sectors with diskpart-clean all. You can also use HDDGURU: HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool Try as many as you can.:)

As a last ditch effort, you may also consider formatting it with what is generally considered as a Swiss-Army knife - the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - CNET Download.com ( Right click and run as an administrator, if you could run it.)

Also check your pen drive manufacturer's site for any repair/format tool. ( Transcend has one for its pendrives)

Finally warranty replacement or a new pen drive - I love buying new pen drives.:)

Kingston Data Traveler thumbdrive with all bootable OS installers and other tools carried in a baggie in my pocket for 7 years. Still has all 16gb available. Watching closely for that to diminish.

about twice as much as now, approx $20 vs. $10 today - free shipping buy.com.

It was recently pointed out to me that it's slow, but I never really noticed or cared. I have a twisted sense of loyalty to this plastic-wrapped chip where I won't replace it til it dies or shows any sign of failure. It's gone swimming with me when I forget to stick it in the sand. I do change the baggie regularly.