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So, somehow over the weekend, my 1GB USB flash drive has managed to become write-protected. There is no switch on the stick, so I'm concluding that something has corrupted at some point. Obviously I can't format it or remove.

The output from dmesg | tail is:

Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 328168
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1
sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Data Protect [current]
Info fld=0x0
sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Write protected
sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Write(10): 2a 00 00 05 08 00 00 00 01 00
Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 328200
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1

I think the second and final lines are a giveaway to corruption, but I don't know how to interpret this output. Could someone help to see if this output gives any indication? I usually eject the drive before removing it, but I may have been lax once or twice. The data isn't critical, it's just bugging me. Any suggestions on how to fix it (if the drive even can be) would be greatly appreciated.

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When a flash drive manages to become write-protected without a write protection switch , you can be damn sure about the flash storage being corrupted / damaged. At this point, there is nothing much you can do about it. It's an indication that your drive is going to die soon. If it's in warranty get it replaced / repaired.

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  • right now i have two pendrives that does this out of the blue. i just dd'd a debian image on one of them yesterday, i'm pretty sure they are both fine and that it's some linux issue.
    – attila lendvai
    Mar 27, 2018 at 12:20

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