Write protection on a USB drive

Question

Write protection on a USB drive

Anonymous

how do you unprotect a usb drive that has put itself into write protected mode. The USB is a Scandisk Ultraslim 128Gb drive. The file system is NTFS.

Chkdsk says

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...

Security descriptor verification completed.

9803 data files processed.

CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...

41195480 USN bytes processed.

Usn Journal verification completed.

The Volume Bitmap is incorrect.

Windows has checked the file system and found problems.

Please run chkdsk /scan to find the problems and queue them for repair.

I then ran, chkdsk /scan /f

and this happened

D:>chkdsk /scan /f

The type of the file system is NTFS.

Cannot lock current drive.

Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

Is there anyway of correcting the volume bitmap of my usb drive?

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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2 answers

Answer 1

Anonymous

Dave, if the drive is locked in write protect, can the user still copy the data off of the write-protected drive? Seems logical that they could ...

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Answer 2

Hi Rob, this happens very regularly to USB flash drives . . .

You will find plenty 'f supposed 'Fixes' on the web - none of them will work

When a USB flash drive goes into Write Protect Mode, it is bricked and will not be repairable - I am sorry but that is the truth.

I have had many, many people come to me over the years, with this problem and believe me, there is no fix, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news !!

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Write protection on a USB drive

2 answers