0

I have a PNY 16GB USB drive that has worked great for a while. The other day, I tried saving something to the flash drive and I received a write protection error. Now I can't edit or save anything on the flash drive, though I can still open and read the files. None of the individual files have been marked as read-only. I read a bunch of stuff but couldn't figure anything out (I will refer to this website, though I found the same information in multiple guides and forum posts http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-fix-write-protection-errors-on-a-usb-stick/).

I have examined the drive and haven't found any switches that I might have accidentally pressed. I tried using Regedit but the StorageDevicePolicies key didn't exist. I tried creating it and I set WriteProtect to 0 but that did not work. I tried using DiskPart. I entered the required commands properly but afterwards when I viewed the attributes I still saw this:

DiskPart Screenshot.

Basically I have tried everything short of formating the drive. I have lots of files on the drive that I want to keep so if there is anything else I can do please let me know. Thanks!

magicandre1981
  • 99,606
sdsanft
  • 11

2 Answers2

1

It sounds to me like the drive may have been removed from a computer suddenly and has gone "read-only" because the filesystem needs repairing. Maybe you can follow the instructions here to check and repair your drive.

davidgo
  • 73,366
1

Copy everything off the USB drive, format it, then copy everything back. This would be the simplest and quickest way to solve the problem.

update...

You may be able to convert the file system to clear the readonly attribute. Like so...

> convert F: /FS:NTFS

or

> convert F: /FS:FAT32
user1751825
  • 1,736