How to format write protected pendrive / memory card

[sandeep07 32]

Friends I have been struggling to format my pendrive which suddenly enabled with write protected feature and I m unable to write data or delete any thing from pendrive, I tried many methods by just googling but no success. I think due to some virus this problem occurred. Experienced member in this forum may help to get rid of this problem.

Good Mrng... & thanks in advance to all members.

[ami1 237]

Without knowning the details of your pendrive / OS etc, there are these generic options:-

1. Check if there is a physical write protect switch on the pendrive. This is usually a small switch with lock icon

2. Do a low level format using either dos shell and format & fdisk if required, or in a linux terminal

(mkfs.vfat & fdisk if required to remove partitions and recreate partition)

If you don't want to format Try chkdsk p: /F /X (p: is your drive letter of pendrive like e: or d: ) in dos shell.

You can also try to Boot windows in safe mode (press F8 repeatedly when it starts booting and choose safe mode with command prompt and then do the format

Try HP USB Tool if you can't do the above: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool.shtml

Try this tool: youtube.com/watch?v=pOhUUwC70B0 (i have not used it. Just came up in google search)

3. Check registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies. The value 'WriteProtect' should be absent or set to '0'.

Search on google or see the following two topics for more details:

http://davidkramer.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/sd-card-write-protection-problem/

http://m3rlinez.blogspot.in/2007/01/just-rescued-my-write-protected-usb.html

[SmartSamrat 109]

or using software with one click

EaseUs Partition Master software.

or

Magic Partition