View Single Post
  #7   Report Post  
Posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,sci.electronics.repair
Tom MacIntyre
 
Posts: n/a
Default USB flash drive - can read but can't write

On Sat, 03 Jun 2006 09:10:38 +1000, Franc Zabkar
wrote:

On 1 Jun 2006 20:25:19 -0700, put finger to
keyboard and composed:


Franc Zabkar wrote:

On 31 May 2006 16:27:03 -0700,
put finger to
keyboard and composed:

I have a USB thumb drive that my computers can read but can't write.


This device uses an OTI 6828 USB bridge chip and was distributed by
Pretec as the iDisk and also given out by Microsoft years ago (they
have nothing on it), but I can't find any information about it.

The OTI chip has a Flash Write Protect signal on pin 18
(
http://www.costar.com.tw/pdf/OTi/Oti-6828.pdf). Have you verified
that it changes state according to the position of the read-only
switch?

Have you tried to format the drive? Is it possible that the directory
you are trying to write to has a read-only attribute???


Thank you, Frank. That's great in formation. I'll take a look at pin
18.

I had no luck formatting the drive, and nothing had the read-only
attribute enabled.


IIRC, someone with a similar problem found that there was a limit to
the number of files you could have in the drive's root directory. But
this doesn't explain your inability to format the drive ...


Hmmm...that's the way it is with floppies, 512 files maximum for FAT12
file system, something like that.

Tom


- Franc Zabkar