Reformat Write Protected USB Drive

Does the thumb drive have a littel write-protect switch? They can be hard to find.

Did you try the Partition tab in Disk Utility?

Set it for 1 Partition, not Current, even if Current is 1 Partition.

Use the Option button to select Map system, such as GUID.

I bought a PNY USB 2.0 FD Media drive probably about the same

and just came across it again and sticking it away for a long time.

It is still read-only and I cannot access the drive.

There is no switch or button on the device and disk utility will not

work with it. Did you ever find out anything about this or how to

un-write-protect the drive ?

What happens when you try to write to the flash drive?

What is the format of the flash drive?

What does Disk Utility say about it?

Not sure who you are talking to, but for me I cannot mount the drive anymore.

When I tried I get:

Verifying volume “1tb-system”Verifying file system.Journal need to be replayed but volume is read-onlyChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.

Here is what disk util returns:

Disk Description : PNY USB 2.0 FD Media
Total Capacity : 64.37 GB (64,369,852,416 Bytes)

Connection Bus : USB
Write Status : Read Only

Connection Type : External
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported

USB Serial Number : AD8BHE04000000262
Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table

Which I cannot do.

This was a such a large USB drive that I put 3 partitions on it when I got it.

One was the OS install for Mavericks, another was a DOS partition.

The drive has no r/w switch or button, but it says it is read only.

I just was able to delete everything off it, so I suspect it is OK, there is just

something weird going on. I have tried it on other systems, other USB ports,

same thing.

Got this thing at Fry's and it was not cheap either, used it once to the copy

the install file. I think I also wrote some printouts to the FAT partition and

printed them at Kinkos. I highly suspect the drive works, but something is

preventing it from working.

There is not much on the net, a couple people have had the same problem.

This is an old drive I was going to just toss but I never got around to it.

I just found it and thought to try it again.

I sent a inquiry to customer support at PNY.com who said the drive

is defective. Also they would need a receipt and the product would

need to be inside the warranty period.

That is pretty much the first time I have every heard anything like

that from a company on a tech item, not standing behind their

product.

I really doubt the drive is defective because it failed so soon, so

PNY.com support is useless as apart from not standing behind

their products.

At the time I bought this because it was the biggest USB drive

that was not super expensive, at the knee of the price curve,

so to speak. It was not cheap and it bugs me that this company's

support is so bad, so I'd have to give failing ratings to PNY and

not buy anything from them ever again.

I myself and other have not had good luck with PNY devices.