Usb flash drive write protection problem

[max]

Hi,

I have a usb 4gb kingston flash drive, during a files transfer operation it become
in-operative and can not formatted, getting the message the disk is write protected, I search the net for the solution but nothing is helpful.
Any idea how to recover the drive.

Regards

[calabazas]

[potential software cause]
According to JEDEC JESD220A, something may have set the WP (write protect) flag in Mode Parameter header.
Standard doc is at http://www.jedec.org/committees/jc-649. Page 244/245 has below descriptions.
"This field contains the write protect (WP) bit: a WP bit set to one indicates that the medium is write-protected, a WP bit set to zero indicates that the medium is not write-protected."

The WP bit shall be set to one when the logical unit is write-protected by any method, including any one of the followings:
• the software write protect (SWP) bit in the Control mode page is set to one
• the logical unit is configured as permanent write protected and fPermanentWPEn = 1
• the logical unit is configured as power on write protected and fPowerOnWPEn = 1
• the device is write-protected by vendor-specific electrical or mechanical mechanism.

[potential hardware cause]
- some flash module has a write-protect switch
- some flash module has a write-protect signal on module pin (via manufacturer specific pin)

[h0nk]

You may try "PLSCSI". With this software You can edit the SCSI-Modepages.
The Modepages contain the deviceflags as calabazas wrote.
You should read the SCSI-specs toroughly. Else may be Your harddrive is also write protected...

Another solution would be to reinitialise the firmware of the stick.
I did this already with a Alcor-compatible controller used in a CNMemory-Stick.
The stick is fine now :-)
I dont know what chipset Kingston has used.


Good luck, and

Best Regards

[Gallymimu]

I'd probably try it on some different computers and if it acts the same throw it out (or try to get a warranty replacement)

[max]

It means the usb flash drives are the most un-reliable media for the data storage and backup.
The kingston web site says it is the OS problem, not the drive problem.
Please suggest the most reliable media for the data backup. (I think it is dvd)

Regards

[calabazas]

Please suggest the most reliable media for the data backup. (I think it is dvd)

- Kingston DT Ultimate G2 USB 3.0 flash works, ~3 years, costy
- add another internal SATA HDD, reliable for ~5 years
- if you have reliable USB link, external USB HDD like WD MyPassport can be useful.

WD MyBook is piece of crap. It requires wiping free space clean to be recognized by BIOS/OS properly.

[Gallymimu]

It means the usb flash drives are the most un-reliable media for the data storage and backup.
The kingston web site says it is the OS problem, not the drive problem.
Please suggest the most reliable media for the data backup. (I think it is dvd)

Regards

We use multiple rotating SATA backup drives and take a drive offsite each night.   They only thing truly reliable is multiple redundancy.  Relying on optical media is a bad idea because that isn't fool proof either, plus they are slow and hold very little data.

[max]

I think if we properly care the optical media then it will be as good as other media, I have some 15 year old cd's data backup, the cd's are still working properly, the most important thing in cd/dvd are no electronics
and no motors compare to other form of medias.

[vtec_b0i]

CD's tend to deteriorate and the foil will flake. If you want reliable backup media go for tape.
USED LTO3 drives are cheap these days and are quite fast.

You can pick up an LTO3 autoloader for $200 these days and a SCSI card is also quite cheap ($100).

LTO3 will take 400gig uncompressed per tape and can stream data at up to 80MB/s. In comparison a WD Green drive gets around 110MB/s

LTO3 tapes are around $10-15

[Gallymimu]

CD's tend to deteriorate and the foil will flake. If you want reliable backup media go for tape.
USED LTO3 drives are cheap these days and are quite fast.

You can pick up an LTO3 autoloader for $200 these days and a SCSI card is also quite cheap ($100).

LTO3 will take 400gig uncompressed per tape and can stream data at up to 80MB/s. In comparison a WD Green drive gets around 110MB/s

LTO3 tapes are around $10-15

Don't forget to mention SUPER long seek times with tape.  They are great unless you want to get a couple of files!

I hate optical media, since they use organic layers they deteriorate over time, and you have no way of knowing how deteriorated they are until they simply don't work anymore.  There are some specialized tools for evaluated P1 and P2 errors on optical media so you can get a sense of how they are deteriorating but there isn't really a metric.

At least a hard drive is fast, cheap, and can be duplicated quickly, Also it's nice to have a medium that you automatically assume is unreliable and will fail so you are more inclined to have multiple copies.  It's a real bummer to go through a box of archival DVDs and find out every one is no longer readable.

[h0nk]

Don't forget to mention SUPER long seek times with tape.  They are great unless you want to get a couple of files!

I hate optical media, since they use organic layers they deteriorate over time, and you have no way of knowing how deteriorated they are until they simply don't work anymore.  There are some specialized tools for evaluated P1 and P2 errors on optical media so you can get a sense of how they are deteriorating but there isn't really a metric.

At least a hard drive is fast, cheap, and can be duplicated quickly, Also it's nice to have a medium that you automatically assume is unreliable and will fail so you are more inclined to have multiple copies.  It's a real bummer to go through a box of archival DVDs and find out every one is no longer readable.

LTO drives seek remarkably fast.
But You have to use a software (Veritas Netbackup, Tivoli Storage Manager, ...) which maintains a catalog of the files on the tape
to get this fast access to a single file.
LTO-4 and LTO-5 can even more store data on a tape and to my personal opinion they are good value for money.


Best Regards

[Gallymimu]

LTO drives seek remarkably fast.
But You have to use a software (Veritas Netbackup, Tivoli Storage Manager, ...) which maintains a catalog of the files on the tape
to get this fast access to a single file.
LTO-4 and LTO-5 can even more store data on a tape and to my personal opinion they are good value for money.


Best Regards

heh well I guess fast and slow is subjective, 50 second average seek time seems like a long time to me

[h0nk]

heh well I guess fast and slow is subjective, 50 second average seek time seems like a long time to me

I think You will not be able to flip through a bunch of >= 100 DVD's in 50 sec 

And the Backup Software is also able to maintain a adjustable disk cache...
As long as all the tapes fit in the library all will be fine.


At home i use two Seagate GoFlex Net running Debian 6 with 1x 1 TB and 2x 2 TB attached on each system.
The 2 TB drives are working in RAID-1 and are mounted read-only normally.
Actual data is written only to the 1 TB drive.

One system is cold standby only.

Once a week the data on the RAID-1 array of the standby system gets a refresh from the active system
where the data from the 1 TB drive and the data from the RAID-1 of the operational system will be merged.

The standby system will then become the master for a week.

This gives me three versions for each file i work on and two versions for older files.

In the near future i will test ZFS for the cache to make a daily snapshot.

But i think at christmas i will add a LTO-4 drive and a spare GoFlex