Remove write-protect from USB pen in Windows
- Joel Lipman
- Windows OS
- Hits: 11395
I just had to put something here as I have been buying and returning failed/corrupt USB pens. In the past few months I have been trying to upgrade my 16Gb USB Integral Pen from Play.Com to a 32Gb equivalent. I use my USB pen as the "My Documents" folder on every computer I use. It was fine with my 16Gb one but my 32Gb ones have all failed at some point.
I went for a cheap one on Play.com (Verbatim 32Gb@£49.99 & Kingston DataTraveler@?) and an even cheaper one on Ebay.com (Leather 64Gb@£29.99). In hindsight, the Ebay one was obviously going to fail (faking the disk size).
I got badgered by my colleagues to splash out and get a worthwhile pen. Aside from some other failures, I decided to get the bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, shockproof 32Gb USB Pretec Pen (as advertised by Gadget Show on Five.tv). Turns out this is an incredibly fragile pen. If files are being written to it and it gets nudged, this will corrupt the pen. BTW I don't use the "remove device safely" rubbish as my old pen never did and it was fine for over a year. The default setup in windows XP is that it doesn't need it.
Bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, shockproof BUT NOT joe-proof! ...