How can I remove "Write Protect" on USB drive.

I found an 8gb USB flash drive that is from Dell. It says Dell Mentor Media on the front and a label on the back that says "Windows 7 Home Prem For Dell"

When I stick it in my comp 2 drives come up, G and H.

I was able to format G, but H says "This disk is write protected" so how can I format it?

Googled and found

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies*

Double click the key WriteProtect in the right pane and set the value to 0 In the Value Data Box. Press OK

But I have no StorageDevicePolicies so that's a no go.

Anyway to format it without having to download any program? As I still don't have Internet at my house.

Is there a physical switch on the drive?

No that's the first thing I looked for.

Try to delete those 2 partitions and create only one with all the space available

You can do it by using the HP disk format tool and reformat the USB flash with that programme, I've done it a few times before on freebie corporate flash drives, I'm mobile cat the moment so can't provide a link, but if you google it I'm sure you will find it straight away, its an old programme and looks crappy but works a charm

Don't know if this link will work but this is what you want

I have exactly the same issue. An 8Gb MentorMedia Win7 USB stick from Dell. I can't format / repartition / do anything with one of the partitions.

I tried the HP USB Disk Storage Format tool and it still said write protected. Is there any way to get around it? I would like to use this as an install / rescue key for my system.

The StorageDevicePolicies sub-key probably needs to be added (right-click the Control sub-key and select New--> Key. Then a new WriteProtect DWORD needs to be added to the newly created StorageDevicePolicies sub-key (right-click in the RH pane and select New--> DWORD Value). Right-click the new DWORD--> Properties and give it a hexadecimal value of 0.

That is a link to a short video describing what redduc900 is referrring to.
RGone...

Happened to me 2 weeks ago...

I deleted it with Partition Guru (http://www.eassos.com/partitionguru.php It's free), partitionned and formated with the Windows Storage Tools (in Administrative Tools).

No luck

I have tried everything listed here and the partition is still listed as Read Only or Write Protected - it is different between programs. Still cannot format or remove the partition.

I am running Windows 7 Pro x64

Detailed rundown of what I have tried:

First, obviously the Disk Management native to Win7.
Then command line format.
Tried to remove read-only attributes in command line.
Tried HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.
Tried RegEdit workaround.
Tried PartitionGuru Free.

I am at a loss. Thank you for any help.

Sorry to hear...

I really have no more idea.

Assume you have done all the steps listed below. I think you did.
*Flipping a switch - there is no switch on my flash drive.
*Formatting the flash drive - I get the "The disk is write protected." error whenever I try this.
*Checking the flash drive for errors - I get the "The disk is write protected." error.
*Going into my flash drives properties and turning off write protection - write protection does not show up under my *flash drives properties.
*Going into regedit, finding my StorageDevicePolicies, and setting WriteProtect to 0 - regedit claims WriteProtect is already set to 0.
*cmd prompt: diskpart-> list disk -> select disk 1 -> attributes disk clear readonly - I get the message "Disk attributes cleared successfully." However, nothing happens; I still get the error "The disk is write protected." whenever I try to do anything.
*cmd prompt: diskpart -> list disk -> select disk 1 -> clean - "DiskPart has encountered an error: The media is write protected."
*Using the "Usb Format.exe" - it can't find my flash drive.
*Using HDDGuru to do a low level format - I get a bunch of errors like "1/31/2013 9:37:03 PM Format Error occurred at offset 159,318,016: 19 - The media is write protected".
*Trying to test with H2testw 1.4 - I get "The media is write protected. Code 19"
*HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.2.3 - I get "Device Media is write-protected".


The link below is the only one I have seen that showed HOW to see if the drive were set to Read Only. And a tool you have not used. Also the idea that the firmware maybe the culprit and cannot be fixed easily at all. Oh and one last thing I did come across. If it is a major brand Usb stick and not some stick that comes with a computer with the O/S on it then contacting the Usb stick manufacturer can often uncover a special tool for doing the format. But it is usually manufacturer specific.

How to Fix Write-Protected Read-Only Disks

ive only created this account to answer your question. i have these dell usbs with the operating system image on it. the mentor media ones your talking about. find "Formatter Silicon Power v.3.7.0.0"

Yes "Formatter Silicon Power v.3.7.0.0" does the job perfectly. I have an 8GB Mentor media sent by Dell to install Windows 8 on a replacement HD. When tried to write to it or format got the message "write protected". Do search for the name of the utility and you will find several sources. I got it from this link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/avfmidl9rlfoy5i/Formatter_SiliconPower.rar
Working as of Feb 18, 2014.

By the way the USB is pretty cheap, write speeds are about 4MB/sec and read about 19MB/s, but it was free from Dell and you can use it for whatever you want where data access speeds are not a concern.

Have fun!

I had an OCZ one that died. Couldn't do a thing to it. Symptoms were similar, if not identical to the ops..

In the end it would just hang explorer every time I plugged it in.

I used Formatter Silicon Power on the same Dell Mentor Media drive and it worked great. Thanks for the tip!!!

I ordered 20 Dell Laptops and each one came with a Mentor Media 8GB USB stick that was write protected.
Was doing some searching to format one of the drives and the only thing I found was the Reg Edit alteration. That did NOT work.

However, the Formatter_SiliconPower worked like a charm!

The link is still good. Just letting everyone know. This does work.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/avfmidl9rlfoy5i/Formatter_SiliconPower.rar

*Props to the user netvox for giving us the link

BE AWARE - the SiliconPower low-level formatter only works with those Dell USB sticks that have a multi-colored label on the back. If your Dell Mentor Media USB stick has a solid blue label, DO NOT use the SiliconPower solution as it will give an error -2 and brick your stick. Does anyone have a solution for the blue-labeled USB sticks? Also, anyone know of how to rescue the bricked USB sticks?

centre21 said:

BE AWARE - the SiliconPower low-level formatter only works with those Dell USB sticks that have a multi-colored label on the back. If your Dell Mentor Media USB stick has a solid blue label, DO NOT use the SiliconPower solution as it will give an error -2 and brick your stick. Does anyone have a solution for the blue-labeled USB sticks? Also, anyone know of how to rescue the bricked USB sticks?

Click to expand...

Oops... did not see your message before trying SiliconPower.
Now when I insert he USB key it says "Please insert media" and every other tools I tried say "No device found" or someting similar.

This is interesting locking technology. I want to know how to do this and reverse this. http://www.mentormedia.com.sg/Default.aspx?Page=Home is the home page of the Mentor Media site that has the relationship with Microsoft and Dell in this case to make these USB sticks. I am wondering if there is some kind of oem specific control key mod on the usb control board to prevent them from being over written. It would make sense that some one would create a non-rewritable usb stick media to replace CD and DVD's for doing this very task of making install media for OS's

If there are any hardware hacker's on here that have board level design experience maybe could disassemble one of these things and reverse engineer this. But maybe not worth the effort as 8gb usb sticks are cheep and getting cheaper every day.

Although it would be interesting to know how to do this so I could lock my custom OS image usb sticks to keep my field techs from trashing or modifying the usb sticks.

Update... some more cool links for reprogramming the firmware on locked usb sticks. http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/repair-your-usb-flash-drive