"Mike" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
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.

Under Linux, treating it as a raw block device, you can blast away at
it with impunity. Formatting, zeroing, randomizing ...

However, I had 2 of these things (8GBm, USB stick, not-very-branded,
no such write-protect switch) die in the same way, within a couple of
weeks. Inserting them to a machine with Linux gave a message saying
basically :-

1) USB Device detected
2) It's a memory stick of this brand, size, type
3) It's write protected

Which meant that the kernel, and all user apps, treated it as such.

Windows had already turned its nose up at the sticks.

I just returned them for 2 new ones, problem went away.

It wasn't EOL due to wear and tear, they went brand new to dead within
weeks when used for shifting video from PC to standalone player. The
replacements are still going strong. Same "brand", different identity
controller when probed by Linux.

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Mike Brown

Hmmm. That sounds pretty much like my experience. More than a couple of
weeks old, but not 'old' by any stretch of the imagination. I don't really
have the option of returning it. It's a FleaBay job from China, which
possibly makes its quality dubious anyway - although in so saying, I buy a
fair bit from modern China, and I have to say that in general, I have been
pretty impressed with the build quality and VFM of most of those purchases.
Of course, I see a lot of other stuff in the 'day job' that I would have to
rate as 'Chinese crap', so I guess it can still be a bit of a lottery.

I guess I'll give the Linux route a try, and if it won't have any of it
then, it will get retired and replaced ... :-(

Arfa