Formating PenDrive

[ravi225]

When Iam formating a PenDrive I got a popup Window With "the Disk is Write Protected". please help me to format a Pendrive.

[clowenstein]

When Iam formating a PenDrive I got a popup Window With "the Disk is Write Protected". please help me to format a Pendrive.

Please give more detail.

What operating system are you using?
What do you do to format the PenDrive?

Some PenDrives have a write-protect switch. Have you checked this?

[ravi225]

First thanku for ur reply...

Normal usb2.0 pen drive , actuality it is attacked by some virus(csrss.exe). when I am trying to format it an error is coming in windows like "format is uncompleate, then iam trying to formate in linux system then it shows "the disk is write protected"...Please help me...

[lynnevan]

csrss.exe isn't a virus. What are you trying to format it to - fat, fat32, NTFS?

What linux OS are you using?

How big is the pen drive.

How are you formating it in linux - w/ fdisk, sfdisk, qparted, etc? Are you running as root, or normal user?

[ravi225]

Actually when I am putting a pendrive to system(windows) automatically some process is running, then i go to taskmanager and verify that the process is csrss.exe, by using endnow option I will try to stop that process but it not working. so iwill try to formate the pendrive but it is not formating,

Then to clear the datain pendrive I put that pendrive into rhel5(linux) system and try to remove the data in that pen drive, but it not possible, an error is coming "the disk is write protected".

How can i clear the virus in pendrive pllease help me.....

[lynnevan]

Actually when I am putting a pendrive to system(windows) automatically some process is running, then i go to taskmanager and verify that the process is csrss.exe,

I have 44 processes running in Taskmanager - 1 of them is csrss.exe. It runs whether there is a pendrive inserted or not. Do you mean "application"?

iwill try to formate the pendrive but it is not formating,

By using Disk Managemant in Windows? What is the error?
When you insert the pendrive in Windoz, can you see what information is on it? Can you delete the information?

Then to clear the datain pendrive I put that pendrive into rhel5(linux) system and try to remove the data in that pen drive, but it not possible, an error is coming "the disk is write protected".

Why don't you remove the data in Windows? Why remove it in RHEL?
Send the results of

fdisk -l /dev/sdX (put correct letter for X).

Answer earlier questions!! Are you "root" when you try to access the pendrive in linux?

How can i clear the virus in pendrive pllease help me.....

I don't think you have a virus.

[beezlebubsbum]

In Windows, right click the "My Computer" icon and select "Manage". A screen will now pop up and select the "Storage" section on the right pane. Now select "Disc Management(Local)".

This should provide you with all of your connected hard drives. Select the USB drive, right click it and delete the partition. Now make a new partition, and format the drive to fat32 (should be the default).

Just a question, you dont have one of those drives that have a "write protect" switch on them?

[CipGok]

Formating in Windows does not work. Windows only formats the partition he can see and not entire usb. The HP USB Format Too is excellent and it does the trick. Thank You both

[beezlebubsbum]

Hey sameface, are you getting a particular error message? I know if the drive is already in use by a particular process, it may stop the format from happening. This is definately more common with Vista and Windows 7 when they use the usb drive as a readyboost partition. Maybe that's interupting your format?

[jro]

We got a whole bunch of USB drives that had a partition that couldn't be removed. It was a CDFS partition and the only way to remove it was to start Googling removal of that type of partition. We found that you have to use a special utility generally provided by the actual hardware manufacturer. So you need to track down exactly who made the device then start digging to find their utility to format the drive space. It took us a while, hope this helps.