copy protection

[spankBot]

I acquired a USB pen drive that was clearly copy protected by another system. I have bypassed many system but for reason I cannot shake this copy protection. There is not lock button or anything and even diskpart fell short. I do not need this drive it is just an exercise of the mind. Any ideas??

[Geek-9pm]

Nobody here will help you. 
Here is why.
1. This forum does not like helping people break the law.
2. If somebody has something very valuable, they would use scheme to  go way beyond  the usual methods. There are  books about this. 

[spankBot]

Dude the drive is clean,it is  just copy protected but whatever. Accidentally locking yourself out of a drive could happen. This is just a mental exercise. I am Kane not Snowden. Pff!!

[DaveLembke]

As Geek stated we cant help here with unlocking or duplicating a copy protected drive.

I got one once for free at a trade show that was for advertising a product with videos etc on it. Was hoping to wipe clean and have as a free useful thumb drive for data but it was read-only and it was manufactured as read-only to take a 1 time write of info. I cracked it open to see if there was any way to fix its write ability but it was protected on the chip which was the controller for the flash memory. I tossed it out.

If drive is one of these, just toss it out and dont waste time trying to unlock it to be able to write to it.

[Geek-9pm]

SpankBot,
Maude you mean something else.
There is a special USB drive that requires a password. Without the password you either can not see all of the drive or what you see is scrambled.

You can either buy a drive with that feature or you can do it in software. The hardware type is much harder to crack.  Here is an article that talks about that kind of USB drive.

How To Password-Protect A USB Drive

Nowadays, USB drives are capable of storing huge amount of data, even up to 1TB! With access to such capacity, we prefer to keep all our important data on USB sticks to keep it with us all the time. However, such portability of important data also raises protection concern. USB drives are portable and very small in size and manufacturers are aiming for making them even smaller with each evolution, which means you can easily lose huge amounts of data in an instant.

Does that sound like what you have?

Otherwise, maybe you have a Kingston Traveler Locker.
Kingston] DataTraveler Locker+

he Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ puts government-grade security onto a flash drive for the masses, with 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption for an extremely reasonable price ($14 street for 8GB). Also available in capacities of 4GB ($12 street), 16GB ($26 street) and 32GB ($65 street), the drive offers strong encryption for personal and business use that is no more inconvenient than entering a password.

So you forgot the password? Read the article.

[Mark.]

@spankbot,
what does "I acquired it" mean?
if purchased new, then talk to the manufactures support line.
if 2nd hand, you're buggered.

[spankBot]

Acquired means that someone wanted to write up a paper regarding his experience as a coda. He gave me drive to place the file on. I believe this was some sort of requirement for renewing his RID certification. That's what that means.

[BC_Programmer]

What is the model number or brand? Might show up with that in Device Manager.

Does it appear with a drive letter at all?

Similarly, can Device Manager populate any volumes?

When you say 'copy protected' what exactly do you mean? Given your use case I assume you mean it doesn't let you copy files to the disk. Can you explain the manner in which it "stops" you?

[spankBot]

Oh lord. It is.. DANE -ELEC 8GB USB 2.0. Yes it has a drive letter.  It is File Allocation Table 32. It is blue and silver. And..oh yea..I cannot copy files to it. COPY PROTECTION DUDE!! As in write protected. Weighs 9.2 grams. Error: The disk is write protected. Remove write protection or use another disk. Need my PC specs too? txt file.This is pretty cut and dry.

[DaveLembke]

Just a fyi that not being able to write to drive is also sometimes a failure of the device itself. They can fail and no longer accept writing to them, and they can become read-only.

No need for the caps 'yelling' and acting like its a pain to provide details, this is one way to get people to stop helping quickly as for we are all volunteers here

[BC_Programmer]

Thanks, my confusion over your use of "copy protected" is because write protection is not copy protection. "A Copy protected disk/disc" is when you are prevented from copying files from, or when you are prevented from copying files correctly from a disk. Old Floppy disks were often Copy Protected to prevent piracy through making copies of the diskette.

Write Protection prevents writes to the disk. Obviously it also prevents copying files onto the disk, but the term "copy protection" as parlance only applies to the source; CD-ROM's are all "Write protected", for example, but only some are "Copy protected" to prevent being ripped or duplicated in some form.

Not intended as pointless pedantry since "Copy protection" is something that it would be a legal liability to help with- Thus Daves reply- "Write protection" is another story, though!

This is pretty cut and dry

Yep, barring a few specific causes, it's often a pretty easy to fix. I've successfully resolved the issue on 2 or 3 drives where it's occurred to me as well. Good to hear you found a solution on your own.

[spankBot]

BC_Programmer: again this was an exercise on the mind. And you can dangle a solution if you like. I will never need your help. In this life or the next. There is no drive.

[BC_Programmer]

Okey dokey.

[Mark.]

BC_Programmer: again this was an exercise on the mind. And you can dangle a solution if you like. I will never need your help. In this life or the next. There is no drive.

so in other words you have just been wasting everyone's time.
isn't the point of posting to get help?

[Allan]

Thread locked.