USB stick mysteriously changed to Read-Only

Dolby

Dolby

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Bought this thing about 6 months back and it all of a sudden changed to read only :/

There are no switches etc to manually change - and I see many have the same issue.


Tried it on a few PCs with XP (I'll try Win 7 tonight)

Any ideas?
Happened to anyone else?
 
Seeing that you do not have a switch on your flash drive, it was caused by a time out. Does your flash hang when you try and access the data on it?
One thing that I know you could try is to format the flash drive and see if that works. If it does not work, then your flash drive is defective and I would suggest you buy yourself a new one. You can have a look at some of them here.
 
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Try the above but failing that, scan your flashdrive for any infections. It may not be the same thing but i had a client who couldn't save files (read only and no button) and after scanning it using (NAV 2010 - HEY! it worked! i forgot the virus that was found sorry :/) i was able to access the flash and save information again. I didn't have to delete any files however just backup what you have just incase.

keep us posted and GL
 
Shove it into a linux PC and delete the unknown directories and files.

You've prolly infected the XP PCs you tried...
 
Same thing happened to my Transcend 128MB a few years ago. 6 months back means your drive is still under warranty. Just take it back and have it replaced (once you're sure it's not any malware preventing you from write access).
 
Its happened to my flashdrives a few times. Go to the manufacturer's website. They often have a formatting utility precisely for this purpose. Flashed mine with the utilities and they worked perfectly again. Seems to be just a error or something cropping up on the drive, since it was not virus related.
 
Oh, whilst examining it on a Linux PC, create the following :

folder - autorun.inf
file - recycler
folder - Documents.lnk
folder - Music.lnk
folder - New Folder.lnk
folder - Passwords.lnk
folder - Pictures.lnk
folder - Video.lnk

This is to prevent most common nasties from infecting your memory stick.
 
perhaps its defective... read on the net they have a finite number of writes, when it fails it becomes read only?
 
I have cleaned and repaired a few flash drives on my Linux machine now like this. But the format/repair utility from the manufacturer can also help, trashed one of my first flash drives before realising Transcend did this.

@TheLibrarian: Tnx for the info on creating files/folders, will note that down for future reference! :)

B
 
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Seems nothing works - but they'll replace under warranty if I send back.

Anyway to kill that data? ;)
 
Dolby said:
Bought this thing about 6 months back and it all of a sudden changed to read only :/

There are no switches etc to manually change - and I see many have the same issue.


Tried it on a few PCs with XP (I'll try Win 7 tonight)

Any ideas?
Happened to anyone else?
Click to expand...

What exact brand/make/model no. is the flash drive? I am having the same problem except it only stops writing data and goes into "Read-Only" mode at about 50% capacity (16GB Kingston Data Traveler 400)

EDIT: As for all the above posts - I've trashed partitions multiple times, I've chkdsk'd it, I've formatted it (Tried to do a full format but it stopped halfway saying access denied), cleaned it, erased it, deleted partitions, created active partitions... Tried pretty much everything. (Told my dad we have to take it back to Frontosa and he just said "Why don't you read the instruction manual?") - Good thing it comes with a 5-year hardware warranty!
 
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