I am facing a problem on wiping a USB flash drive.
I then tried to run error check on it. However, it prompted me that USB flash drive is write protected.
Note that this flash drive does not have any switch on it for manual write-protect. I've wiped other similar flash drives without any problem.
I can't format it (both with right click then 'format' nor through command line). Diskpart command doesn't work either.
Next, the following is message is shown when I tried creating a folder on it.
"Unable to create the folder new folder file system error 65535."
It seems like the user plug out the flash drive without using safety remove and corrupted the flash drive.
Does anyone has any other suggestions to resolve this?
it seems like your usb's filesystem corrupted, do a disk scan first
First thing try the stick on another PC, in some cases it could be an OS setting that prevents a USB stick from being writeable.
If the behaviour is the same, it is likely that the USB stick "locked" itself.
If this latter is the case, the only solution is, after having backed up current contents, re-initialize the stick with the appropriate Manufacturer (or Recovery) tool.
Generally speaking using these tools may be particularly complex, and there are not guarantees of any kind about their efficacy in solving the issue, and you may well - by mistake - "botch" the stick for good.
jaclaz
As flash drives are now only worth a few dollars, is it even worth your time to investigate why you can't wipe it.
Just destroy it and get a new drive.
mansiu - Disk scan does shows that Windows found problem with the FAT file system. However, it can't be fixed with '-f' flag as it's write protected. Still, it's great to get a confirmation that it's the problem with the flash drive file system.
jaclaz - Unfortunately, it's the same when it's plugged into other computers. Yes, seems to me that the USB flash drive locked itself due to the corrupted file system. I always like to make sure that I exhaust all possible solutions that I know of, within my capability. I will take that re-initialized suggestions into consideration in the future if I need to do that. As for now, I guess that's it for this flash drive.
passmark - Very true on that. I'm thinking of the scenario where there's a requests for wiping of devices with such problem. If there's an easy way to resolve this within my capability, I would like to be able to learn and do it. I would be able to run all the the known methods quickly to see if it fixes the problem tie to such request. As for now, I will take your advise!
Other methods I tried
1) Formatting in safe mode
2) Diskpart in safe mode
3) Changing windows registry key (I don't expect it to work since it's a FAT volume and the key is for NTFS. Besides, the write protected "feature" is tied to the flash drive instead of the computer. Just an action of exhausting all possible known methods)
Try a low level zeroing of the drive (this will ignore the file system).
Get
What I meant was that the USB stick controller locks the filesystem (this has nothing to do with the actual filesystem, but rather with something "gone wrong" in the controller settings).
The manufacturer tools usually let you make a "read only" filesystem/volume on the stick, and I have seen more than once that such a setting (for *whatever* reasons) affected what were "normal" read/write filesystems/volumes only minutes before.
In other words, attempts to 00 write the stick (if the above is the issue at hand) will fail nonetheless, since it costs nothing, and there is no data to lose, it is worth anyway a shot.
jaclaz
Passmark - I've tried that but it says that the flash drive is write protected so it can't proceed. Nevertheless, it's good to know about this tool. I like it.
jaclaz - Thank you! That's the answer I am looking for! Thanks for the clear explanation on this issue. I appreciate that!