SanDisk USB drive not sure why suddenly write protected
- see screen shot below - unable to Clean
as some I/O device error.
anyway to solve this problem?
Have you checked our knowledge base articles?
( Get Support for Your SSDs and Flash Products | Sandisk )
Try this one.
Write Protection is a way to prevent data loss on a drive. The solution would be to replace the drive if in warranty.
Drive Usage Exhaustion:
Drives write data to blocks. Blocks can fail or go bad based due to usage. USB drives have threshold for the number of good blocks to determine the health of the drive. The drive will write protect itself to prevent data loss when the number of good blocks is lower than the preset threshold.
Storage Blocks:
The drive keeps two copies of data on two different blocks. The primary and secondary block. The drive will go into write protection mode to prevent data loss when corruption occurs on both copies of the block.
When a SanDisk USB suddenly becomes write-protected, and Disk Utility or DiskPart shows I/O device errors, the controller has put the drive into read-only fail-safe mode. That happens when the flash memory starts reporting too many errors. I would say try another system.
If it fails, then there is no real fix. Treat it as read-only, get your data off, and replace it.
You can try the solutions mentioned in the Wikihow article (How to Fix "The Request Could Not Be Performed" I/O Error), along with a few other methods below.
First, make sure your Windows system is fully updated. Sometimes problems happen because important updates are missing. If the issue started after you updated a driver, try rolling the driver back to an earlier version to see if that fixes it.
You can also perform a clean boot. This starts your PC with only basic services and helps you find out if a third-party program is causing the problem.
Next, check the transfer mode of your new SSD in the BIOS/UEFI settings (for example, make sure it’s set to AHCI if required). An incorrect setting can affect performance.
It’s also a good idea to run a full virus scan. Malware can slow down your system or interfere with your drive.
Finally, use the built-in CHKDSK tool to scan the drive for file system errors or bad sectors and repair them if possible. Here’s a related blog for you to find and fix the root cause of the issue - Hard Drive I/O Device Errors: 9 Best Fixes.
If your SanDisk USB shows write protection with an I/O error even after DiskPart, it’s usually a failing drive. Try another USB port/PC and run chkdsk /f, but honestly if it still won’t clean, the hardware is likely dead and replacing it is the practical fix.
