My 64gb Cruiser blade has somehow become write protected and I cannot work out how to unlock it.
Anyone have any ideas?
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First, check for a physical lock switch on the drive. If there isn’t one, plug it in, open Command Prompt as admin, and run diskpart. Then type list disk, select disk X (replace X with your USB number), and attributes disk clear readonly. If that doesn’t work, the drive might have developed a firmware-level write-protection due to corruption. In that case, backing up what you can and reformatting (right-click then Format) usually fixes it. If it still won’t let you write after that, the drive may be failing.
That’s frustrating! Your Cruzer Blade probably went into “write-protected” mode either because of a software glitch or its internal controller. First, try plugging it into a different USB port or PC, sometimes that’s all it takes. Check if there’s a tiny physical lock switch (though most Cruzer Blades don’t have one).
On Windows, you can open Command Prompt as Admin, type diskpart, then list disk → select disk X → attributes disk clear readonly. If that doesn’t work, try editing the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies and set WriteProtect to 0.
