A flash drive funeral :(((

[Gilgamesh21]

Hello,

 I have an 8GB Ridata USB flash drive. My friend brought it to me yesterday and it appears that I fried it but it would not hurt to ask around. Anyway, what happened was that the flash drive was acting 'weird' as it did not 'copy back' any folder that I would put on it.

I did a quick check disk and it reported errors and I opened the drive and found a bunch of hidden word files with 'exe' extension and an 'autorun.info' (yeaaa i know, VIRUSS). Trying to delete the files manually only reported a 'files are write protected error'.

Sooo, I embarked on the tedious process of cleaning the flash drive which apparently turned bad .

What I tried was:

1- Booted in safe mode and tried to delete the files manually but it did not work ( there was even no 'delete' option for the files on the flash drive in safe mode!!)

2- Formatting the drive also did not work as the files reappeared when using check desk and the problem persisted.

3- tried the old 'storagedevicepolicies' trick in registry but it still reported 'write protected files'.

4- Booted through win7 installation disk, clicked 'shift+F10' to bring the console and tried using 'diskpart' to clean the flash drive but all I met was the obnoxious error of 'the media is  write protected' .

5-Tried 'low level' hard disk formatting tool but it did not work either.

6- Under the same cmd through win7 installtion disk, i tried to us an mbrfix tool but it could not do anything to the drive and reported it as write-protected as well.

I am totally sad and frustrated at how this turned out as I didn't expect that a silly virus would actually lead me to lose the pen drive.

Does anyone have a trick up their sleeves to help me with this or should I accept my destiny of buying a new pen drive for my poor soon-to-know friend?

[Calum]

Are you sure there's not a switch somewhere on the drive to switch it into write protected mode?  Some models have those.
If not, I would say it's pretty much had it, good news is they're dirt cheap

[Computer_Commando]

You can try Transcent Autoformat Tool.  It's for SD cards but will also recognize USB drives.  It resurrected an SD card for me which nothing else would even format.

You have nothing to lose.  Too bad Ridata had only 1 year warranty on USB flash drives. 
http://www.transcend-info.com/support/DlCenter/DLSoftware.asp?SID=2

[Gilgamesh21]

@Calum:

No my friend. I checked the thing 2.5 million times for a switch as it was one of 'many' suggested solutions I read that I forgot to mention. It is one of those ordinary sticks and yea luckily its only 8 gb..

@Computer_Commando

It was a beautiful glimpse of hope when I went through downloading the tool but I was encountered with the gloomy message of 'Disk is Write-protect' again.

I think this is it. Time to find someone I hate and 'stick' the 'stick' in them

[Computer_Commando]

Do you get the same errors in more than 1 computer?
If yes, try deleting the partition on the flash drive.
or maybe this:  http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/how-do-i-unwrite-protect-my-flash-drive/f81fb531-d419-4eac-9e24-3bb7d6c25e55?msgId=dc04a2e7-6d5b-4bd5-86db-2d78bb268ce3

[Geek-9pm]

Do you have, or can you find, any versions of Linux on a live CD? Linux does not give a hoot about the permissions ended in Windows.  It should Find the USB device and let you destroy its partition information.

Some kinds of malware may hide in a flash drive using some kind of Windows trick.  A Linux utility, line GPARTED, can nuke the flash drive.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

[patio]

You're time is wasted on an 8G flash drive...IMHO.

[Gilgamesh21]

@computer_commando

No I have not tested it yet on another computer but I believe it has nothing to do with that as other flash drives are showing up correctly in My computer.
I actually said at the beginning of my post that I tried the 'storagedevicepolicies' but it did not work .

 BTW, this registry add i believe was the reason that got the flash drive all messed up. I think I should have used DiskPart first before applying that fix

@geek

Thank you for the link, I tried the Gparted utility ( actually I learned a new thing from all this which is nice ) but still, Gparted showed the flash as an 'unallocated' space with a yellow exclamation scary mark next to it. I tried to apply a 'delete' operation on the flash but the same same sameee 'cannot write the /dev /dsp because it is open read only'((

@Patio

You could not say totally wasted because you might learn something new ( like I did) from things like that even though I am 99%sure that the time is wasted on actually being able to solve the problem .

What I learned is:

1- Do not try the 'storagedevicepolicies' ever againnnn, it is messy anyway and I am almost sure it was the reason it fried the USB because it might have confliced with the autorun.info commands and everything got messy later.

2- Use Gparted.


Thank you!

[patio]

I meant wasted in relation to a new 8G flash drive...not in relation to what you may have learned...