read only attribute of USB cannot be disabled

Question

for my raspberry pi i use a USB stick for the operating system. i changed the USB to read-only in linux and was able to change it back. After rebooting i found out i broke something and it could not boot. so i tried to edit the broken file by plugging the USB into my laptop. however it is still read-only and if i try to edit the file i get an error saying this media is write protected.

i tried the following sollutions:

first i verified that the USB has no write protection switch

then i used diskpart to remove the readonly attribute, i get the message saying the disk attribute was cleared successfully but running attributes disk gives the following

Current Read-only State : Yes

Read-only : No

Boot Disk : No

Pagefile Disk : No

Hibernation File Disk : No

Crashdump Disk : No

Clustered Disk : No

then i tried using regedit by changing

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

WriteProtect

to 0 and rebooted my computer.

this did not work either.

then i tried formating the drive but windows gives an error saying the disk is write protected.

is there any other way to regain access to the usb drive?

Answer 1

You can boot from a Linux live USB, you might be able to remove the read-only flag using the following commands:

sudo hdparm -r0 /dev/sdX

Replace X with the letter assigned to your USB drive.

Open Command Prompt as administrator and try:

fsutil dirty query X:

(Replace X with the drive letter of your USB) If it says the volume is dirty, run:

chkdsk X: /f