Write protected USB stick
 

Hello there everyone,

Question to the tech support forum about write protected USB sticks. I'm currently working at a local computer repair shop, and from time to time, HP sends up recovery media for their laptops. Most of the time we just toss them because they send us DVD's. Recently though, we got four 32gig USB 3.0 sticks to use for recovery drives (or making images of them). We already have images on our own computer to either give to clients or use ourselves for restores.

Now we want to use the USB keys for ourselves, but here's the issue: The drives are all write protected. I've already tried just about every tool I can get my hands on to try to wipe these drives. Even Hiren's Boot CD with Low Level Format doesn't work.

Any ideas or tricks I might be able to use?

try this?
Remove write protection from USB drive in windows 8 - mywindows8.org

it might have a switch in it too.

Unfortunately this isn't going to work - it's not a physical switch (I opened the case and took out the actual board - not a switch to be found) and it's not a registry policy. The device itself is somehow write protected via the [bad word choice] firmware maybe?

shitty... they are obviously doing a good job of making sure people don't use them for anything other than intended. Makes it hard to get virii on it too yeh? :-)
Keep us posted if you figure it out.

Going to try the couple programs they have linked at the bottom of that article enaberif - thanks for the resource. I'll post a report soon!

yes good of them keeping out worms on thier name

only way is if known the password or brute force ,,,distory array

Still can't get it going unfortunately :( I'm currently trying to use the chip-maker's shady chinese software (since it's made by Phizon) to see if they can unlock it. It's one hell of a guessing game. XD

TRY this app hp

No dice :/

Right now I've taken the sticks apart and it appears I can try to unlock them by using chinese made software that is particularly shady directly from phison itself (the memory makers).

Going to get back to tinkering when I have more time...