I'm having a problem with my 120GB USB thumb drive that I bought from Amazon. It was working fine until I tried to transfer a 500MB file, and the transfer seemed stuck. I hit the stop button, safely removed the device, and when I plugged it back in, I got a message saying there's an issue with the drive. I attempted to repair it, but I got an error saying the disk is write-protected. I've tried using multiple USB ports on two different PCs, and my Windows system is up to date. I also tried using the command prompt and ran the diskpart command to clear the read-only attribute, which said it was successful, but I still can't write to the drive. Could this just be a faulty thumb drive?
5 Answers
Yeah, I’ve seen this happen before. When USB drives start acting up like this, it's often to protect your data. Make sure to back everything up immediately before the drive potentially fails completely.
As others have said, it’s often a sign that the USB drive is on its last legs. Flash drives inherently have limited write cycles, so once they hit their limits, they may become read-only to prevent data loss.
Good point! Sometimes, thumb drives have a little physical switch for write protection. It’s worth checking if yours has one; that could be why you’re seeing the write protection error.
It sounds like your drive is likely failing. USB drives and SSDs commonly switch to read-only mode as a warning sign before they completely fail. You should transfer any important files to a new drive as soon as possible.
If you didn’t heed the advice yet, you really need to move your data now! The drive could fail completely the next time you plug it in. Don't risk losing your files!
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