Formatting flash drives What if it is red-only or write protected?

You should remove it as below: 1 Pull the USB flash drive out of your computer's USB port. Check the bottom end and sides of the drive to see if it has a write protection switch. Push the plastic switch into the "Unlock" position. 2 Insert the USB flash drive back into the USB port. Close the pop-up window that appears and navigate to the Start menu. Select "My Computer." 3 Locate the drive letter that corresponds to your USB flash drive in the "My Computer" window, such as "F:\" or "D:\." Double-click the drive letter. Attempt to use one of the files on the drive. Right-click one of the files if you still receive a write protection error and select "Properties." 4 Navigate to the "General" tab and remove the check mark from the box labeled "Read-Only." Click "Apply" and then attempt to use the file. 5 Return to the Start menu and click "Run." Type "Regedit" and press "Enter." Navigate to the registry folder "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies." 6 Check if there is an entry at the right side of the window labeled "Write Protect". If the entry is not there Right-click inside the window and choose "New D Word." Type "Write Protect" and press "Enter." 7 Double-click the "Write Protect" entry. Check that the value listed in the text box is "0." If it is not, delete the value and replace it with "0." 8 Close the registry editor and attempt to use any of the files on the USB drive. Return to the "My Computer" window if you continue to receive a write protection error message. 9 Right-click the drive letter for the USB flash drive and choose "Format." Click the drop-down menu named "File System " and select "Fat32." 10 Click "Start" to format the USB flash drive and remove the write-protection feature.

Then format it properly using Diskpart run as Administrator as follows:

http://www.jwgoerlich.us/blogengine/post/2009/11/05/Use-Diskpart-to-Create-and-FormatPartitions.aspx

To use the command line to bring a disk online, create a partition, and format it, run the following commands: C:\> Diskpart DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART> list disk select disk (id) online disk (if the disk is not online) attributes disk clear readonly clean convert mbr (or gpt) create partition primary select part 1

DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART> DISKPART>

active (if this is the boot partition) format fs=ntfs label=(name) quick assign letter (letter) list volume

The following are common errors displayed if you miss a step: DISKPART> clean DiskPart has encountered an error: The media is write protected. See the System Event Log for more information. Resolution: run "attributes disk clear readonly" before trying to clean the volume and create the partition. DISKPART> convert mbr Virtual Disk Service error: The specified disk is not convertible. CDROMs and DVDs are examples of disks that are not convertable. Resolution: clear all data off the disk before converting by running the clean command. DISKPART> create partition primary Virtual Disk Service error: There is not enough usable space for this operation. Resolution: run "clean" before trying to create the partition. DISKPART> format fs=ntfs quick Virtual Disk Service error: The volume is not online. Resolution: online the disk, create the partition, and convert to mbr before formatting.

The following are common errors displayed if there is a hardware problem: DISKPART> clean DiskPart has encountered an error: The device is not ready. See the System Event Log for more information. Resolution: If the event log entry states "The driver detected a controller error on \Device", the problem is likely your storage controller on your mainboard. Check your hard drive connections and reload your storage conroller driver. If the event log entry states "VDS fails to write boot code on a disk during clean operation. Error code: 80070015@02070008", the hard drive itself has failed.

The following are common errors you may see if there is a hardware problem: DISKPART> clean DiskPart has encountered an error: The media is write protected. See the System Event Log for more information. Resolution: Running "attributes disk clear readonly", as mentioned above, is the first step. Next, the disk is may be locked by an active process, in which case a reboot generally clears the error. If the disk is a USB flash drive, check that it does not have a write protect switch. The Imation Clip and the Kanguru Flash Blu II, for example, both have this feature and will cause the above error if protected. If the disk is SAN attached storage, check that the LUN is not presented in a read-only state. Windows Server 2008 also has a condition were SAN storage is erroneously reported as read-only. See the Microsoft article 971436 for details and a hotfix. Are you seeing an error that I did not list above? Drop me an email (jwgoerlich@gmail.com) and let's work thru it. Currently rated 5.0 by 52 people