My USB drive is intermittently undetected in Windows 11. When I try to format it, Windows reports that the drive is write-protected, and safely removing it fails because the device is supposedly still in use. The drive itself seems healthy because it can be formatted and used normally on another computer. I also tested a newer USB drive, every available port, and a USB-C adapter with the same result. Malwarebytes found nothing, while formatting works without problems when I boot Ubuntu on the same Dell Latitude 5510 laptop. Could a Windows setting, background process, or recent update be causing this?
4 Answers
Try removing the device through Windows Settings or Device Manager, then restart the computer and reconnect it. Also check Windows Update and the laptop’s chipset and USB controller drivers. If the problem began after a particular update, temporarily uninstalling that update or using System Restore could confirm whether Windows changed something.
A failed safe-eject operation usually means a process still has an open handle to the drive. Resource Monitor can help find it: open it from the Start menu, go to the CPU section, search the Associated Handles field for the drive letter, and close the application using it. Windows Search indexing, thumbnail generation, backup tools, and security software are common causes.
Since Ubuntu can format the drives on the same laptop, the USB hardware and firmware are probably fine. This points to Windows holding the volume open or applying a software-level write-protection policy. Check whether File Explorer, indexing, backup software, antivirus, or another background process is accessing the drive. Restarting Windows and trying again with all Explorer windows closed can also help.
Use Disk Management to inspect the drive, and if necessary use an elevated Command Prompt with DiskPart. After selecting the correct disk, commands such as `attributes disk` and `attributes disk clear readonly` can reveal or remove a read-only flag. Be extremely careful to select the USB disk, then delete and recreate its partition only after backing up anything important.
Because the drive works in Ubuntu, I would avoid assuming it is failing. Double-check the disk number in DiskPart before using any command that removes partitions or formats the device.