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My flash disk is password protected. When I plugged it into my Ubuntu machine I didn't see the flash disk appear, but when I plugged it into Windows I can see the drive but can't open the drive. It gives me the option to "format" but when I click on "format" it says "password protected".

Is there a way to format my drive and back to the original?

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I don't have any experience with password protected flash drives but most probably password protection is a software feature and not the hardware one. If that is the case then you can run gparted on ubuntu and delete the current partition(s) on your flash, then recreate a partition(s) and format it to your desired file system.

To install gparted use:

sudo apt-get install gparted

you can then run it System->Administration->gparted

Update:

Your disk may be failing, try running 

sudo badblocks -v /dev/sdb

if the ouput from this command says zero bad blocks then try write mode test to make sure that your disk is fine. Use 

sudo badblocks -v -w /dev/sdb

for write mode test.

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  • thank you, i tried that but gparted unable to format the partition error massage: "input/output error during write on /dev/sdb error fsyncing/closing/dev/sdb:input/output error"
    – Achu
    Jan 28, 2011 at 9:17
  • Your disk may be failing, try running "sudo badblocks -v /dev/sdb"
    – binW
    Jan 28, 2011 at 9:23
  • When i run that command it says "checking for bad blocks (read-only test)" after that i tested again gparted. but same problem.
    – Achu
    Jan 28, 2011 at 9:52
  • did u let it complete? I mean it should give some output
    – binW
    Jan 28, 2011 at 10:08
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    the output of badblocks is the list of badblocks. So non stop number output means most of the disk is not usable meaning you need a new disk.
    – binW
    Jan 28, 2011 at 13:27

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