I have only just stumbled upon this reply. What an ill thought out and quite frankly disgusting response. Firstly i opt not to use the encryption option, as the USB is plugged in and removed multiple times per day. Second, i am a working academic, and the mere suggestion around pornography is absolutely outrageous. Finally, you must be a complete cretin to suggest such a scenario, shame on you @Ed_P you vile being.
I have only just stumbled upon this reply. What an ill thought out and quite frankly disgusting response. Firstly i opt not to use the encryption option, as the USB is plugged in and removed multiple times per day. Second, i am a working academic, and the mere suggestion around pornography is absolutely outrageous. Finally, you must be a complete cretin to suggest such a scenario, shame on you @Ed_P you vile being.
And you FopaUK have no sense of humor!
Hi.
I’ve got write protection fault on SanDisk ExtremePro USB3.1 128GB flash drive.
I understand that the only way to go now it to RMA or recycle it.
But… the problem is that I’ll need to use this and really I don’t know what went wrong. Brand new drive, a few days old. Just regular use, fdisk->mkfs->dd->read. A few cycles.
The option into getting into endless RMA cycle is not very appealing to me.
Also, what to do? (Except avoiding)
The drive wasn’t designed for the type of use you are doing with it. You should look for something simpler.
look it is common knowlege a lot of usb drives are tossed because of firmware bugs INCLUDING a FAKE write protection INTENTIONALLY applied to a drive that failed to write data properly
all consumers ask is for a tool that resets that lockout by telling the firmware to ignore that bug an return to factory thereby destroying data but making a perfectly functional drive (maybe with a loss of that block of the nand flash) usable
I don’t care what marketing tells anyone it CAN BE FIXED WITH ACCESS TO SUCH A FACTOR RESET TOOL
sure it may no longer be 100% new in the sense of lost capacity and wear leveling records but 99.9999999999% of consumers don’t care if it dies again due to worn flash rather that it works longer than 2-3 weeks before a write error causes this pointless lockout
tool or gtfo nothing but a fix for this firmware bug or ability to bypass it by factory reset is acceptable
Sandisk company please create sandisk online recovery tool for write to protect
Try Warranty Replacement Process
If that doesn’t work return it to the seller.
Thank you
rj
Try this, insert the SD card in any DSLR, then FORMAT. Now TRY FORMATING in COMPUTER.
It worked for me.
Write protection from usb could be easily removed by reseting the setting from manage panel of usb and after removing certs chief privacy code it could be writeable.
If you don’t wanna format the USB, try editing Registry and running diskpart to remove its readonly attribute.
Get details
This is a firmware issue. We need tools to wipe, replace, or reset the firmware to default factory settings. It cannot be fixed from the operating system side. It’s the firmware that decides who can read or write to the USB, not the operating system.
Read Kathie’s link above.
years later … haha… Ok I found a fix that worked for me. I couldnt do anything with the flash drive in windows. So…
I put in in a linux pc. (Ubantu) . I used the “Disk” app that comes with Ubantu. It allowed me to delete all the partitions and then to format the drive.
After that it worked fine in windows again.
Good luck!
oops
I have the same problem with a 32GB Memory stick, write protected can’t delete anything from it. Very annoying.
hello ed_p. I know my password and have been using it for years (about three). I tried to remove the password through the “scandisk security” program so that I could use it on a computer without the program to unlock it (because I did not have administrative rights to install the program on that computer). when I removed the password it is still requiring me to enter the password, but now that password does not unlock the drive… ugh! thoughts?
@KSP.bell thanks for sharing the information
You don’t have to “install the program” to a computer just “run/execute the program” on a computer. And if it requires admin rights it might have worked by simply pressing Enter to the prompt. Many default users have Admin rights.
Now that we’ve covered the hindsight aspects, so you don’t lose all your USB files I recommend you contact Western Digital Customer Support for the safest way to proceed.