I accidentally pulled out my USB flash drive while formatting. Now when I insert it, a window pops-up saying it needs formatting. But formatting fails because it says that the stick is write protected. I tried using disk part, low level formatting, command prompt using admin. Nothing worked.
Does anybody know another method I could try?
Try using CCleaner.
You can navigate to Tools>Drive Wiper in CCleaner and wipe the flash drive. Set it to wipe the entire drive, set it to however many passes you'd like (just one is fine) and be absolutely, completely sure you select the right drive.
After that, format it by pressing Windows Key+E to open Explorer, and the right-clicking (Format...) in the context menu. Set it to defaults and you're good to go.
Do be aware that all of these operations will take a considerable amount of time, and that your data will be unrecoverable. If you need to salvage anything from the flash drive first, it is a bit more involved but not unmanageable.
1.Go to Run->regedit
2.MyComputer->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SYSTEM->CurrentControlSet->Control -> StorageDevicePolicies
3.Double click the key WriteProtect in the right pane and set the value to 0
4.In the Data Value Box, press OK
5.Exit Registry, restart your computer and then re-connect your USB pen drive to your computer.
or
HP USB Storage Format tool
or
Neo 9 tool able to get past the write protection and format the pen drive
In my case (Emtec / Intuix) the issue appeared to some kind of corruption of the firmware. In the end I found: http://www.emtec-international.com/nl-eu/faq-usb-restore The tool that was provided here solved the write protect issue.
