Hello, I searched a lot to remove write protection or just format my newly bought HP pendrive Model HP v236w. I once copied .mp3 files and when I used pendrive again after a week to copy more files, it says that disk is write protected. I tried quick formatting, low level format, diskpart, chkdsk, easus tools, UFIX II tool by PNY official site. None of the methods worked for me. The UFIX tool (tried all versions II, III, IV) is not even recognising the drive letter. What should I do? Please help and don't suggest to replace product under warranty. I have warranty but I want a solution to this.
The reason I suggested returning them to NI was precisely "so that they can be reused". I'm reasonably certain that, short of disassembly and a soldering iron, these are really "Read-Only" Drives. So it you send it back to NI, they can send it to someone else more quickly than shipping them from Hungary.
Nope not true. After diving into the world of Russian forums relating to USB drive firmware I'm pretty certain that these just have firmware loaded on them that makes them read only, or appear as optical media. The manufacturers of the memory chips used in these drives have utilities on changing the firmware. I was successful in wiping one drive using this software trying to load a new burner and firmware on it. But it failed to write the new firmware, after erasing the drive. I can still communicate with it using the manufacturers software, but Windows doesn't see it. Of the 6 drives I have they have they all seem to be Toshiba's, all with ICVersion 2251-03. The Flash ID varies but the first 4 bytes indicate it might be difficult to reflash with either 98DE9493, or 93DE88A3. Maybe if I get bored I'll play around some more. You can solider on the chip to force it to go into a debug mode, but from what I've read it isn't required, several pinouts are available online.
I think the bigger risk with malware is what someone could do to them after they've left NI hands. If I had an NI stick, I would assume I could trust it, not knowing that somewhat else had already hidden malware after it left NI's company. And NI wouldn't want the bad publicity that would come if one some was infected by a stick that had their name on it.
I had three drives, one Keysight 4GB, a NI 16GB and a NI 32GB. For the Keysight drive I used UfixII since it was the only version that specifically called out 4GB drives. For the two NI drives I used UfixIII as it was Windows 10 compatable. The "Format" option immediately failed so I tried "Restore" and it worked perfectly.
First I tried the drive that I've screwed around with MPALL tool. Using this tool I was able to wipe the drive but couldn't get it to be writable again. I tried UFix III and couldn't restore, I got error 175 "Contact Vendor". This was a 16GB Toshiba and was a tear drop shape, and metallic.
I grabbed another drive that appeared identical to this one, but I hadn't messed with MPALL with it. Restore actually did something and wiped it then showed the drive had 14.4GB free. But I couldn't write to it as it was write protected. And the Format option in the Restore program resulted in Format Failed 46.
So I grabbed a new drive type, a 16GB that was metallic, and rectangular in shape. Here the UFix III worked as expected. I performed the Restore, then format, and it appears to work like a normal drive again, so kudo for that.
I have one other tear drop shaped drive that is 64GB. UFix I, II, and V didn't recognize it. UFix III (Restore) didn't recognize it in the format, and since it is similar to the other drives I didn't attempt a Restore.
Okay update on the tear drop drive. I realize what is happening now. So the original firmware that was restored on them is a write once type of firmware. After performing the restore I can write to the drive just fine and format it no problem. As soon as I unplug it, and plug it back in it is read-only again. I can perform the restore again to write again, but only until I