My university gave me a USB drive for a class, and I finished the course about a year ago. We were allowed to keep the drive, but it is permanently write-protected even though there is no physical lock switch. I would like to reuse it instead of throwing it away. The device appears to contain a Micron 2450 512GB NVMe drive and two Wilk USB 3.2 Gen 1 devices. Is there a safe way to determine whether the NVMe drive itself is locked, or whether the USB controller is enforcing read-only mode?
3 Answers
If the NVMe drive is a standard removable M.2 module, the write protection may be coming from the USB adapter rather than the SSD. You could remove the M.2 drive and test it in a different NVMe-to-USB enclosure or directly in a compatible computer. If it works there, the original USB controller is responsible and the SSD can still be reused.
Some USB controllers switch a drive into permanent read-only mode when they detect failing NAND or other storage problems. In that situation, there may be no normal operating-system setting that can remove the protection. Copy off anything important, then identify the exact USB controller, VID/PID, and model before considering a manufacturer-specific repair tool. Random unlock utilities can be unsafe and may contain malware, so do not run them without a backup and a trustworthy source.
It’s also a good idea to have a backup of the computer before testing unknown controller utilities. A tool that claims to unlock the drive could damage the data or be malicious.
First check Disk Management and the drive’s reported attributes to see whether the disk itself is read-only or whether only the file system has a problem. If it is a standard M.2 NVMe SSD, testing it with another NVMe-to-USB enclosure is probably the simplest next step. Avoid forcing a format until you know which component is imposing the restriction.
Do you mean physically separating the M.2 drive from the USB electronics? I’m not very experienced with hardware, so I want to make sure I understand before opening it.