Format/repair a write-protected USB drive with I/O errors?

Discussion in 'Storage Devices' started by effarga, Dec 17, 2013.

  1. effarga

    effarga Geek Trainee

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    I ordered a bunch of 1GB usb drives from a semi-shady Chinese company. Most of them work just fine, but a couple of them won't let me format them because they are "write-protected." There is no write protection switch on the device. I have exhaustively tried the following:

    - Windows format: "The disk is write protected"
    - HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool: "Device media is write-protected"
    - diskpart clear attributes readonly: nothing
    - diskpart clean: "Diskpart has encountered an error: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. See the System Event Log for more information." (The System Event Log only contains the error: The IO operation at logical block address 0 for Disk 1 was retried.)
    - HDD Low Level Format Tool: "Format Error occurred at offset 985,595,904: 1117 - Device I/O error" and hundreds of similar errors
    - Sacrificing a lamb to the USB gods
    - Starting in safe mode with command prompt and running format, diskpart, and chkdsk

    So do all these I/O device errors mean that these USB drives are just totally screwed? Is there any way to get more information about the problem?
     
  2. Sniper

    Sniper Administrator Staff Member

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    You've probably gone through a list of things I would have tried, so sounds like dead sticks i'm afraid.
     

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