"Franc Zabkar" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 23 Jun 2012 02:35:13 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Thanks for that explanation. I guess it's a possibility. The utility I
tried
is called "Repair_v2.9.1.1.exe'

FWIW, this site appears to have a more recent version:
http://www.tcp.ac.th/downloads/Repair_v2.9.1.1.zip
http://www.tcp.ac.th/downloads/Repair_v2.9.1.8A.zip

I downloaded it from a website after Googling on "Flash drive says it is
write protected". Many of the hits that returned made reference to this
utility, and provided a link to the URL where it is to be found. Almost
everybody reported total success from using it, but there were a few cases
like mine, where it didn't work.

ISTM that this utility performs a low level format. Exactly what this
means in this particular case is unclear. I suspect it may just be a
zero-fill utility.

I guess I'm just going to have to buy a new one. They are not expensive.
It's just annoying to be beaten by something as simple as a corrupted file
structure. It has been suggested to me that there are Linux ways of
forcing
a reformat, so I might have a mate of mine who is into Linux give it a go
as
a last ditch attempt.

Arfa

AFAICS, if it were simply a case of a corrupted file structure, then
you still would have been able to wipe the drive.

Instead, it looks more like the failures reported at the following
Google hits:
http://www.google.com/search?q=ssd+%...%22worn+out%22

I'm assuming that USB flash drives and SSDs wear out in similar
fashion.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.


I guess that's another possibility. To be fair, it hasn't been used all that
much, so it would be odd if it had failed by running out of internal
'shuffling' space. It's mainly used to transport files from one machine to
another rather than shunting them across the network at wifi speeds. My wife
has a stick of smaller capacity that she uses for moving AVIs and similar
video format files on a daily basis, and there has been no problem with that
one. Both of us remove files that have been used, and are no longer needed
to be on the stick.

The only reason that I called it a file corruption issue is that XP reported
that the file structure was "RAW" and invalid when it tried to mount the
device, and it wanted to reformat it to FAT32. I guess this could be a
hardware problem, that Windoze is trying to do its best to interpret as a
software issue ...

Arfa