Problem with a 'new' flash drive...I'm stumped.

My desktop (soon to be upgraded) is Win7 Home Premium.

I got the "Steampunk" Flash Drive (8GB, normal flash drive with fancy casing) from ThinkGeek awhile ago, but have just now gotten around to using it. Trying to install PortableApps and running into a big snag.

The drive was initially read as 8GB. PortableApps downloaded fine onto the desktop, but when I try to install it to the flash drive I get sequential "Error opening file for writing..." messages and the only way to get rid of them is to either skip the file in question or abort the install entirely (something does copy to the drive, but it's not usable).

When I try to either delete the partial folder or format the drive..."This disk is write-protected"...how was I able to create the file then? Windows now reads it as 16GB But it can't format it.

Lather, rinse, repeat until I got annoyed with the thing (and had to leave for work). My old flash drive and all others I have work normally; MBAM can't see anything wrong with it.

When I got home I ran diskpart to remove read-only...which initially seemed to work, but a formatting attempt gives me 'write protected' again, and there's nothing in the disk properties that says it's read-only. I found some evidence that BitLocker may be the culprit...not sure what triggered it. That raises the question whether I'll ever be able to use the drive normally or have to go through this each time (kinda defeats the whole purpose of a flashdrive then doesn't it).

As of now, the drive is reading as 16GB FAT32 and any formatting attempts fail due to this mystery write-protection (nothing in properties indicate write protection, and there are no physical write-protect switches on the drive itself). Write-protect is not enabled in registry.

So...what's up with this thing?

Is it a sandisk ("steampunk" isnt a brand)? While dinking around with my ssd crap, I came across the realization that windows REALLY doesn't like sandisk, and sometimes wont even read it.

Also, SOMETIMES, theres an actual physical lock on a drive.




Also, not to be crude, but is an 8gb flash drive worth this much headache? They are literally 5-10$ at pretty much any store, my local gas station sells them. I got a pny 16gb flash drive yesterday for 8.99$ at meijer.

Not really, but it's just an interesting conundrum. My preferred solution would be to crack the casing and just swap the board with a known good one, but it seems that doing that would destroy it (no seams in the casing that I can see).

The drive is unbranded; when I try to view the drive in Windows it wants to format...while it's still telling me the drive is write-protected, somehow it was able to write a partial PortableApps directory. It's listed as "Generic flash USB device"...seems to agree that it's 16GB though. I'm not arguing with the magic doubling capacity, but that's pointless if I can't do anything with it.