Help -New Flash Voyager GT 3.0 - Write Protected and I don't know why?

[winston2013]

I just bought this item about a month ago (New on eBay from a pro seller. In it's factor sealed package. (I can send the auction page) I have only used it 2 or 3 times to transfer minor amounts of data. And now upon trying to use it I get a prompt that says it is "Write protected" ??

Cannot even format it! Ive used usb's for years and never seen this.

Im sure it's an easy fix. This is a high-end product afteralll.. I just have no idea what it is/ Any help wouldbe most gratefully appreciated..

if any one knows why this locked up like this on it's own/ I use it on a Windows 7 Home Premium and i7 processor, and a Mac bk Air 11" i7 running OSX Lion, latest version. Thank you.

[Toasted]

Try format the drive with SD Formatter and see if that works.

[winston2013]

Thank you for your suggestion. The behavior is very strange. I downloaded the SDFormatter but when i launch it the area where the drive should drop down is gray'd out. The disk itself does not show up in the drive tree. It seem like it is because plugging it in adds a new letter but when you click on that letter it says, "Please Insert a Drive" ..behaving as if nothing is plugged-in. Yet if I plug the Corsair into a usb 2 port, the computer says, 'This will run faster in a usb 3.0 port'

When the device worked it read CORSAIR in the Drive Tree. That's gone.

Now it adds a letter I cannot access and this formatter is obviously having it's own issues. (I hit Refresh & Options but the drives area remains grayed out.

[Nec_V20]

Try this when you have the drive plugged into the USB2 port and it has been recognised:

 

1) Got to "Start" and then "Accessories"

 

2) Right-click on "Command Prompt" and then click on "Run as Administrator"

 

3) At the command prompt type in "Diskpart"

 

4) Type in "list disk" and you should see your USB drive listed with a number if it is being recognised at all.

 

5) Now type in "select disk" & the number you saw associated with the USB drive in step 4)

 

6) Type in "clean". This will remove any partition info from the flash drive.

 

7) Type in "create partition primary" to create a new partition.

 

8) Now type in "select partition 1" and if you ever want to make the USB flash drive bootable type in "active"

 

9) now type in "format fs=ntfs" (or you can type fat32 if you don't want it to have the ntfs file system)

 

10) Type in "assign", this will assign it a drive letter.

 

11) Type in "exit" to get you out of diskpart.

 

I have a feeling that the MBR (Master Boot Record) or MFT (Master File Table) or FAT (File Allocation Table) of the USB drive got corrupted and the tools from within the Windows GUI don't really work all that well with USB drives at the lower level.

 

This should get you sorted. If it doesn't then you have a case for an RMA.

[winston2013]

Thank you. It was going so well until "clean" , now the command prompt says 'Diskpart has encountered an error: the media is write protected. See the system event log for more information.'

Even getting it to read CORSAIR in a usb 2 port, took repeated attempts in different ports. So now it's reading. (Im not taking it out!) but I cant get past this Write protection.

Im gonna keep at it whit your instructions and the CP .. but so far IM stuck here. Thank you so much for your help. I may just try and send it back for another one. I dont know how long they're covered but this is kind of nuts.. Ive never had any drive do this. There's gotta be an override to unwanted write protection.

[winston2013]

Update: I was not able to get it past the 'clean' step through the DOS prompt.

I did relaunch the SDFormatter and this time the drives did show up and the CORSAIR was there too. But when I hit format it says: 'The memory card is write protected. Please remove the write protection switch.' Ive been looking all over (right clicking the Drive letter it's in and going to Properties) for the 'write protection switch' ,but havent found it.. or seen any mention of 'write protection' in there.

[Toasted]

Contact your seller and ask if they can replace the drive for you.

[yzhou]

I have the same problem. I submitted an RMA and they were asking for the receipt that I could find.