6Oca
How to add Write Access on FAT32 USB drive?
I'm at my wits end here. I installed the Windows OS on my USB drive in order to install Windows on a brand new PC; for some reason this installation failed.
Upon plugging in the USB to my (old) PC again a few days later, I see that I can't delete anything; write access is disabled.
I've tried the following:
- formatting the device (which is obviously impossible due to readonly mode)
- accessing via USB's properties and disabling read-only from the Security tab (security tab doesn't appear because it's FAT32)
- access via CMD's diskpart (cleaning leads to I/O error, presumably due to no write access), and as for clearing the readonly attribute, console says it's successfully cleared it but listing the attributes again or accessing from file explorer, shows it's had no effect
- Delete drive contents from Disk management (I/O error, presumably because of no write access)
- I've also tried downloading software related to this in order to help, as I figured I'm not the first who's faced this problem, but what I found was either from sketchy sites or old software which doesn't work on Windows 11
My USB does not have a physical write-protect switch
Now to be clear the USB worked perfectly fine and has been working perfectly fine for years, it's only upon installing the Windows OS that this stuff happened. I can see all the files from the download inside the USB and can open them without a problem, so I don't think the device is corrupted.
How else can I add write access to this USB? It's a SanDisk Ultra.
