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I have a 8 GB Sandisk USB flash drive. Recently it became write protected somehow. So I searched in Google and I tried to remove the write protection through almost all the methods I found. Unfortunately nothing worked.

So I decided to try some other ways. Some said that flashing the USB flash drive will solve the problem. But I don't know how. So how can it be done ? What I meant by flashing is to repair the USB flash drive by softwaring it again. Or, is there any way to do a factory reset to it ?

TomJ
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  • Your drive became _writeable_? Or _read-only_? – summea Apr 22 '14 at 16:34
  • @summea Write protected actually. – TomJ Apr 22 '14 at 16:47
  • Your question is not clear. Please rephraise your question so what you want to know is crystal clar. Update your question its a living breathing question. – Ramhound Apr 22 '14 at 16:50
  • After you back up your files on the USB drive, have you tried reformatting the drive? – summea Apr 22 '14 at 17:04
  • @summea Yeah. Several times. Formatting won't happen in it. When ever I tried to format, it says 'The USB flash drive is write protected'. – TomJ Apr 22 '14 at 17:10
  • Ah; sometimes companies make some sort of application to do more of a "factory reset" for flash drives (or memory cards) but I haven't been able to find something like that for SanDisk _(at the moment, at least.)_ Does anything on [this other thread](http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/296309-32-remove-write-protection-sandisk-cruzer-flash-drive) help? It may be time to invest in a new flash drive, too... – summea Apr 22 '14 at 17:17
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    Could this be a case of the drive reaching the end of it's life and locking itself? Flash devices have limited write cycles, a well designed one will go read only when it's out of anticipated life to avoid losing data when a cell actually fails. – Loren Pechtel Apr 22 '14 at 17:18
  • @summea I already tried that. – TomJ Apr 22 '14 at 17:21
  • @LorenPechtel Are you saying that its time to buy a new one ? – TomJ Apr 22 '14 at 17:22
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    Yes, he is saying that. – frlan Apr 22 '14 at 18:48
  • Did you try reformatting it in Windows Disk Management? – RedDragonWebDesign Apr 30 '14 at 05:13
  • @AdmiralAdama Yes, I did. Can you help me ? – TomJ Apr 30 '14 at 05:43
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    @LorenPechtel You said that flash drives have write cycles. Is it possible to reset it ? – TomJ May 04 '14 at 09:15
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    @Tom: You wouldn't want to. The write counter is a safety device--it's much better to have the drive go read only than corrupt data when the cell burns out. – Loren Pechtel May 04 '14 at 15:20

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