32GB USB "Suddenly" is Write Protected; Cannot Format or Delete Files?

I don't see a physical switch on the drive to enable/ disable write protection. Depending on how I went about to solve this I either got the message Write Protected or Read Only. Generic SanDisk Ultra 32GB stick. It was formatted fat32 and I got the message that I needed to format to NTFS in order to write larger files to it which I did and successfully formatted to NTFS. In the process of writing 2 video files I got an error message for one of the files though I do not recall what it said. One of the video files plays normally the other one it says unsupported. Both of the original files play fine on the computer. I do not recall what if any activity I used the disk for previously. I tried several methods to remove the read only/ write protection:

https://www.easeus.com/partition-man...indows-10.html

From the above link I tried the Diskpart command fix which did not work and when I tried the Regedit.exe fix and created a new StorageDevicePolicies key and that did not work.












And I also tried this:





All to no avail. So any further input appreciated. Just to reiterate I want to be able to format and or delete files from the USB flash drive and remove the Read Only and Write Protected. TIA.

@Caledon Ken

@EdTittel

@Brink

Thanks to all for suggestions. Not home at the moment but will try again tomorrow.

Bastet said:

You can also try the clean cmd to see if that kicks it back into action.
Run
Diskpart
list disk
select disk x (where x is the number of the USB drive)
clean
exit
Then go to disk management to initialise it.

Thanks for replying. I already tried that : ) See the fourth pic in my first post above. Tonight when I get home I am going to try the other suggestions.

The DiskPart screenshot shows the USB stick recognised as only 8GB, not 32GB. Have you checked that it's a genuine SanDisk Ultra stick and not a fake 8GB stick re-engineered to appear like the capacity is 32GB? Suddenly showing a reduced capacity and changing behaviour is also a classic symptom of a fake stick when you copy files over to it that overwhelm its 'real' capacity.

I've used tools like PassMark BurnInTest, ChipGenius, RMPrepUSB's FakeFlashTest, Flash Drive/Card Tester and H2testw to determine the 'real' tested capacity versus the 'claimed' (and entirely 'fake') capacity and whether chip controllers are branded or generic.

Have a look at this RMPrepUSB article for (much) more info about testing for fakes and download links for testers. IMO it's a very interesting read, if nothing else.

Hope this helps...