USB flash drive became read only

I have a problem with a USB flash drive I have had for quite a while, that
Windows Vista insists all the files and folders on it are read-only. I can
create a new directory on the drive, but not rename it, and I can copy files
onto the drive, but not delete them from the drive.

I have found no way to correct the problem. For example if I look at the
properties of folder on the drive and uncheck the "read only" checkbox, it
does it, but is read-only the next time I try to use it.
Does anyone know the source of this curious behaviour (which a few other
people have also reported) and how to fix it?

Does it have the little slider like the
old floppies used to have? Maybe
it was moved into the read only
position accidentally.

It does have a slider, but this is not the issue, as files can be copied to
the drive, and folders created there. It is only the things that are created
that become read-only.

Maybe the device has become faulty. I have one that if i stick it in my usb
port, my computer crashes. I keep it around in the hope that someone will
steal it one day. :-)

As to the read-only flag: You're looking at the read-only attribute
for the root directory. But there is no read-only attribute for a
directory. What you're seeing is a shortcut to allow you to set or
clear the attribute for all files in the directory.

Each time you display this tab of the properties dialog, you're
looking at a 3-state box in its third state: neither set nor unset. On
my computer that shows as a green blob in the box. Click it once, and
the box is empty, that's the NO state. Click it again and a check
appears, that's the YES state. If you click OK or Apply when the box
is in the YES or NO state, the read-only attribute is set or cleared
(depending on whether you're in YES or NO state) for EVERY file in the
directory. But when you bring the box up again, you will again see it
in the third state.

If you bring up the same box for the individual files, you'll see the
result of what you've done.

No, I don't. You've said that the r-o slider on the side of the thumb
drive is positioned correctly, besides that you can create new folders
and files. I can only guess the hardware (the thumb drive) isn't
working properly.

Thanks for your knowledgable reply.

One thing that differs from the normal behaviour of a directory that has
been made read-only is that I am unable to rename any subdirectories or
files - the option is not available in the menu when I right click on a
directory on the flash drive.

However, the drive works fine on another computer running Windows XP home:
files may be deleted and directories renamed without problems. Is this
consistent with with the drive itself being faulty?

Thanks, Tim, for your knowledgable and precise reply, which taught me
something I should have known, but didn't!

The behaviour is actually rather different to that of read-only files.
Directories can be created, but not renamed - right click does not even
provide the option to do so, and left clicking does not make it possible.
Similarly with files. This drive was behaving perfectly normally on the same
PC until quite recently, and is now behaving perfectly normally on my clunky
old XP machine.

I am still puzzled. Anyone able to cast any further light?

I came across this forum by chance and discovered this is one of the best thread ever. Thanks u guys so much for the information you give. So cool.

We have no idea however what thread you're referring to
since it was apparently very old and you didn't quote anything.

I wonder if the poster did it just to spam us with his ad (in French) for
auto insurance?

Well I have the same problem, so let me start from the beginning because
this one stumps Me. I bought a verbatim 8gb flash USB drive. Works
fine, fast, ultra slim. I re-formatted it on My laptop (XP SP3
English) and then used TrueCrypt to create a container taking the whole
available space. Then putting whatever I choose on it. Then I unmount
it in truecrypt and move it to My Vista64 French machine. Open using
TrueCrypt, works fine, can see the files. Mind you at this point all I
am doing it look at the files, I'm not actually writing anything. From
that point on, when I try using that flash drive on ANY of My other
machines (Ubuntu or XP SP3) I get an error saying that the disk is write
protected once it is mounted in TrueCrypt. That flash drive DOESN'T have
any write protection slider, button or whatever. I think it's Vista
that's putting some kind of read only attribute to the thing and I would
really, REALLY like to get that thing working in between at least all My
MS Windows machines.

In TrueCrypt, under Settings -> Preferences, there is a check box to
mount drives as read-only. Since you're running on several machines, it
is possible that your various installations of TrueCrypt are set
differently.

I checked that param and it's unchecked, however the
"Mount volumes as Removable Media" is unchecked. I'm going to verify
that. It's really annoying because it works fine until the moment that
USB flash drive goes to the Vista box, that's when trouble arise. I
checked to see if the ESF was messing things up but counldn't find
anything.

Alas I am still stuck with the same problem, I find it really
annoying, the flash drive is readable everywhere, but if I do open it in
Vista 64 then the behavior starts. I reformatted it a few times,
played with NTFS/Fat32 and the option above to no avail. As soon as it
gets opened in Vista 64 the problem returns. If anyone has a clue,
please let Me know

Bummer. I am clueless beyond my failed idea.

Looks like you're posting in HTML (the use above of """ - or maybe
I should type "&&quote;" - is my clue). HTML is deprecated on Usenet...

I'm sure that mucks up Usenet pretty
well. Could be worse however, could be arpanet ;)

Found out the issue was with the security installed on all the
machines, the low lever encrypt was updated and it will not accept
anymore any flash disk that doesn't have at least some fat partition
(i.e. if you have a fully encrypted flash that uses a different key from
the base key of the system encryption then it locks that drive and marks
it as unformatted/unreadable.

So I have to leave a header block of fat32, about 1-2 k in size and
then I can mount the truecrypt container. It's less stealthy but it
works.

You're welcome - and thanks for the information about TrueCrypt. I also
use it, but since I've always just made small encrypted drives, like
2GB on a 4GB thumb drive, I never had your experience. Let's hope I can
remember this when I decide to encrypt a whole thumb drive :-)