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| Thread ID: 125381 | 2012-06-24 02:14:00 | USB flash drive write protected? | dugimodo (138) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1283653 | 2012-06-25 03:08:00 | This is going to sound stupid :D but the drive doesn't have a physical read/write protect switch on it does it? I've got a couple here that do and the switch is situated in such a way that when you unplug the drive you usually end up moving the switch into the write protect position so next time you plug it in you can't write to it. :rolleyes: |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 1283654 | 2012-06-25 03:09:00 | Thanks Nick but I went through both those pages before posting here, google has turned up nothing useful to date. | dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1283655 | 2012-06-25 03:13:00 | This is going to sound stupid :D Only slighty, people do miss the obvious sometimes. For example on my first post at the end and no the drive does not have a write protect switch on it :P I am about ready to give up, among other things I've scanned the drive and my pc with almost every malware scanner known to man. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1283656 | 2012-06-25 03:15:00 | Only slighty, people do miss the obvious sometimes. For example on my first post at the end :P :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: Pretty sure Kingston USB drives have a 5 year warranty so you should be able to take it back where you bought it and get it replaced. |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 1283657 | 2012-06-25 03:40:00 | I had the same problem two weeks ago with a Kingston Data traveler 4GB. I lent it to my son, he got halfway thro saving some files then stopped. He decided to delete what was on there and start again. Same problem , "WRITE PROTECTED". There was no switch on this unit to protect its contents. I tried all manner of deletions, even reformatting, (which it wouldn't do). 5 year warranty. But as I have owned it for 2 1/2 years could not find the receipt. I then took it to work to our IT man who likes a challenge. He had it a week and then gave up trying to solve it himself. I understand that he now contacted Kingston who told him to send the unit to Simms international Ltd, Auckland. and they would replace it. Back came a new DT109W/4GB free of charge. No news on what was found with the original. I do not know if our IT man got extra preferential because of past business. |
gradebdan (2186) | ||
| 1283658 | 2012-06-25 03:48:00 | This is the beast here www.pp.co.nz and you are correct it does list a 5 year warranty. Given that this model hasn't existed for 5 years (< 1 I believe) I'm hopeful that I won't need a receipt to make a claim if it comes to that. I'll wait until I hear back from kingston and go from there. It's just incredibly frustrating. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1283659 | 2012-06-25 04:37:00 | This answer (www.fixya.com)mentions checking if the file itself is write protected by trying to delete it, including a boot utility. Then check for hidden folders. Then reformat. | kahawai chaser (3545) | ||
| 1283660 | 2012-06-25 06:23:00 | as root dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M Then make a new filesystem on it. If that doesn't work then it is probably stuffed at a hardware level. Thanks but I'm a complete novice when it comes to linux so I'd need more than that, how to get to a command prompt, how to be sure I'm not zeroing the hard drive instead, how to be root, etc |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1283661 | 2012-06-25 06:54:00 | Thanks but I'm a complete novice when it comes to linux so I'd need more than that, how to get to a command prompt, how to be sure I'm not zeroing the hard drive instead, how to be root, etc OK. It depends a bit what linux and how you boot it, but generally Ctrl-Alt-F2 (or F3-6) will get you a virtual terminal with a login prompt. Log in as root. Plug in your USB. type dmesg this will show a logfile with the detection of your usb and what device it was assigned to (and any errors if they happen). 'fdisk -l' will also list all the drives & partitions if you want to be really sure you are not nuking your OS :) If rather than logging in as root, you start a terminal from your menu or such, you will be your regular user and will need to change to the root user. This can vary by distro but most can do it by typing 'su' (for SuperUser) then entering the root password (prompt will change from $ to #). Or prefix the commands with 'sudo' if that has been setup (that is setup by default for the first user in the buntu's) I think Puppy runs as root by default (this is generally a bad idea). |
fred_fish (15241) | ||
| 1283662 | 2012-06-25 07:32:00 | Thanks Fred, but that was painful enough to remind me why I avoid linux and it didn't work :( Can't zero fill a drive if it's write protected. what I need is to force a reformat but nothing works. I'm running Kubuntu LTS 12.04 on a old PC and it's so dog arsed slow as to be practically unusable. I don't know what the root password is, logged in as me and used sudo and it asked for a password but I got the fdisk -l to work at least, tried dd if=/dev/zer of=dev/sdb1 bs=1M and it came back with disk is read only. From the desktop it won't mount the drive for the same reason. Is there a way back from the terminal to the desktop after doing ctrl-alt-f2? I had to reboot. Also dmesg flashes a wall of text past too fast to read and with no obvious way to scroll back. I don't think linux can help this problem. Back on the windows front, kingston got back to me and suggested formatting with an SD formatting utility they supplied a link to, which failed with the same write protected error as everything else. Next step its to attempt a return, which will be fun as I have no record of purchasing it and don't remember when. I do know where though so I'll start with that. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
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