Having trouble making a recovery usb drive or remove write protection

Hazel123 · Oct 11, 2025

Is it normal for a usb to be write protected after making a recovery drive? I had assumed that was it. But maybe the recovery drive failed because the usb stick was faulty - or not big enough and that caused some kind of error.

gunrunnerjohn · Oct 11, 2025

Hazel123 said:
Windows "Make a recovery usb". Googling shows a lot of people having problems with it or just saying it doesn't work. The recovery usb program says you need a 16gb drive. Other people have had it saying they needed a 32gb drive. I used a 32gb drive and it failed. However, it is possible the drive had a fault if windows tried to repair it afterwards. It worked first time on the 64gb drive. There are various posts online about 32gb not being enough. Whether that's the case or not I don't know but a 32gb usb drive only actually has about 29gb.

This is the option with "include system files" ticked as well. So I would think it would need more than 32gb if Windows is on it too as well as all the repair tools.

I also bought a bunch of 32gb drives recently, and at the time, had difficulty finding less than 64gb ones! Just used my only 64gb drive up.

The jury has spoken. I just generated a recovery drive, it included the system files option, and it used 11.6GB on a 32GB drive. I'm not sure what you'd have to do to use up the extra 17.3GB to exceed the 32GB drive capacity.

gunrunnerjohn · Oct 11, 2025

Hazel123 said:
Is it normal for a usb to be write protected after making a recovery drive? I had assumed that was it. But maybe the recovery drive failed because the usb stick was faulty - or not big enough and that caused some kind of error.

The one I just created is not write protected after finishing the process, I just copied an extra file to the root, no sweat. I ejected it removed it, and then plugged it in again and again write a file, still no problem. Then I erased both of the added files, and ejected it.

JLArranz · Oct 11, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
I don't understand this particular comment. I've shutdown dozens of times, actually probably hundreds of times, with a USB drive installed. I've never seen one get write protected from that operation. AAMOF, my two laptops both have a 512GB USB mini-drive permanently connected to a USB port and have lived through many shutdown/startup cycles.

I can understand that you might get a glitch if you yank the power plug and have a sudden power-out shutdown, but not a normal shutdown. My computers are all on UPS systems, and of course, my laptop doesn't have power off shutdowns since it has a battery. I've pulled plenty of USB drives out without them being "safely removed" as well, again never a write protect issue.

The times that I've had a USB error or some kind it's always been the there's a real problem with the drive, and it finds the round file right after that.

Sorry for the confusion but I never meant that leaving a pendrive plugged was dangerous for it, actually the contrary. As my comment was in response to Bryan, I'll reform it now to quote him.

gunrunnerjohn · Oct 11, 2025

Hazel123 said:
I also found it hard to find 32gb ones recently, but got a couple of these, they're ok.

Amazon.co.uk

I just bought five TeamGroup 32GB USB drives from Amazon here in the US for $18.

I looked on the UK site and there are pages of 32GB USB FLASH drives.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=32gb+usb+3+flash+drive&crid=TIXLML3RFO8Y&sprefix=32gb+usb+3+flash+drive%2Caps%2C224&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Hazel123 · Oct 11, 2025

Thanks for testing that @gunrunnerjohn - so it's nothing to do with the 32gb size then - just a faulty usb stick as @zbook suggested. Or one that happened to fail at that time.

gunrunnerjohn said:
I just bought five TeamGroup 32GB USB drives from Amazon here in the US for $18.

I looked on the UK site and there are pages of 32GB USB FLASH drives.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=32gb+usb+3+flash+drive&crid=TIXLML3RFO8Y&sprefix=32gb+usb+3+flash+drive%2Caps%2C224&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

There are pages yes, but I'm fussy about the brand. Some I find more reliable than others. These days I tend to stick to sandisk. Transcend are the ones that seem to fail most I've found (and also their external usb drives). Some makes I've never heard of so avoid. Among the well known brands there isn't a lot to choose from. Plenty of 64gb upwards though.

gunrunnerjohn · Oct 12, 2025

I've had good luck with the TeamGroup USB FLASH drives. I used to buy PNY disks, but I got five of the 32GB ones and three of them crapped out within months! I pitched the other two and moved on. I do have a number of the mini Sandisk drives, I use a 512GB one in my laptop for a backup drive. OTOH, I have a PNY USB 3.2 256GB drive that is a fire-breathing monster with read/write speeds over 400MB/sec, that one has been rock solid. It's clearly a different technology, since it acts like an SSD and not a USB FLASH drive.

I think these drives are like other computer components, the quality rotates based on the model and the calendar.

I would imagine that Amazon over in the UK should have these. They come in all sizes from 16GB to 1TB.

cereberus · Oct 12, 2025

It is really simple - the drive has failed. It is very common to fail in a "readonly" mode.
Drive needs to be direspectfully consigned to the great bit bucket in the sky.

Spunk · Oct 12, 2025

If your flash drive has BitLocker encryption enabled on it, you will not be able to format it.
With the Flash Drive inserted, Go to Search and type Control Panel and press enter. Chose Large Icons.
Click BitLocker Drive Encryption. If the flash drive is encrypted, turn it off before trying to format it.

If this still fails, try it on another computer, if the same thing happens the drive may have failed,

Scannerman · Oct 12, 2025

antspants said:
Did you try Rufus or not.

This is vast becoming a classic question.

gunrunnerjohn said:
I don't understand this particular comment. I've shutdown dozens of times, actually probably hundreds of times, with a USB drive installed. I've never seen one get write protected from that operation. AAMOF, my two laptops both have a 512GB USB mini-drive permanently connected to a USB port and have lived through many shutdown/startup cycles.

I can understand that you might get a glitch if you yank the power plug and have a sudden power-out shutdown, but not a normal shutdown. My computers are all on UPS systems, and of course, my laptop doesn't have power off shutdowns since it has a battery. I've pulled plenty of USB drives out without them being "safely removed" as well, again never a write protect issue.

The times that I've had a USB error or some kind it's always been the there's a real problem with the drive, and it finds the round file right after that.

I know that on some of the older USB drives if you just pulled the drive before doing the "safely remove" you could damage it. I've damaged a few that way by just absent minded-lee pulling the USB stick. I'm pretty sure that this problem is long gone now with newer drives but Windows still keeps the old "safely remove" option available (probably for older USB devices). Like you, to the best of my knowledge I've never had a USB drive fail on me as a result of a normal shutdown. I've rebooted with external drives turned on countless times. Hmmm... Perhaps that's why my Sabrent external enclosures kept dying on me. Never thought of that. Perhaps there's something to this after all.

antspants · Oct 12, 2025

I’ve never used “Safely remove” in my lifetime.

Hazel123 · Oct 12, 2025

I'm not aware of having just pulled that usb. I'm quite careful about that. It hadn't been used for a long time as it had something on I had intended to keep but was no longer needed. So all I did was plug it in, format it, then start the recovery drive process. Maybe it was just about to fail anyway.

Having trouble making a recovery usb drive or remove write protection

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