USB flash write protect

[Peter]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, William Park wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 07:03:42PM +0300, Peter wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, Jason Shein wrote:
>>
>>> I have 2 USB memory sticks that belong to a client that have a strange
>>> problem.
>>
>> I have been warned by merchants not to format certain usb keys because
>> things like you describe are known to happen. I do not know about your
>> make.
>
> What brands of USB key did the merchants warned you about?

I do not remember, but for example the one I use almost daily, is from 
Z-Cyber (?) and I was warned not to format it, but I did format it 
several times and nothing bad happened. I think the 'don't format' 
recommendation is like the 'don't let it get wet' recommendation. It's a 
folklore thing. But I work with hardware and I *know* that the setting 
of write lock bits could occur with certain bit patterns and certain 
kinds of flash chips.

Peter
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml