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Over the years, I have had several cases where either an SD card, a USB stick or any other removable storage medium has had a physical defect, and after some use, or a certain amount of formatting, it becomes a Read only drive no matter what OS or means of formatting it you use, including the dd utility. In most of these cases, everything I have read says that this is almost 100% of the time a hardware failure and/or a defective storage medium, which I would agree with.

In my case, I am not trying to fix a damaged USB, or SD card, but instead, trying to write files to it, and then physically modify it (and do "targeted damage"), so that after I have the files on it that I want, it is impossible for any software whatsoever to modify it, and it is impossible to put it back into RW mode again.

Does anyone know of any way to permanently alter, or intentionally damage, an SD card or USB stick, so that It will forever be stuck in read only mode? I can't find any sort of starting point anywhere on the internet, so even links, blogs, or articles involving this subject matter would be helpful.

If you have the expertise to provide direct instructions for a task such as this, a writeup would be even better!

Dave M
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DanRan
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  • Some do have a tiny physical switch. Is it out of question that you missed it and accidentally toggled it? – planetmaker Dec 12 '20 at 05:38
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    Are you referencing my experiences with usb drives going bad and becomming read only without my doing so? Or did you misunderstand my question? If you are asking about the read-only usb stick, it thats a subject that doesnt pertain to properly answering the question. But to answer your question anyway, I am 1000% certain that my usb drives which have gone bad and changed to read only (due to defective hardware), DID NOT have a physical read-only switch. They were simply defective, and becomming read-only was a side effect of their physical defectiveness. – DanRan Dec 12 '20 at 05:45
  • @ Tetsujin Not in the slightest. All of the methods mentioned in your link are software methods, that are reversable. Im looking for irriversable changes on a hardware level, or at least the lowest possible firmware level with something like password protection to be able to access the usb firmware again. – DanRan Dec 13 '20 at 03:37
  • [sdtool](https://github.com/BertoldVdb/sdtool) is a firmware-based solution that claims to have a "permanent write protection" option – bitinerant Dec 17 '20 at 18:12
  • @bitinerant is that a linux too? if so, is it in any homebrew bottles? – DanRan Dec 18 '20 at 03:38
  • @DanRan - I believe it's *only* Linux (note, "... a program that allows a Linux host to configure the protection register"). I'm not sure what you mean by 'homebrew bottles'. There's a pre-complied binary for the Pi (see "For a quick demo"). For other platforms, you'll probably have to build it yourself. I haven't used this tool. – bitinerant Dec 18 '20 at 05:31

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