[Coco] off-topic: USB drives scam?

[Robert Gault]

Roger Taylor wrote:
> I've been looking into this for months now and am baffled by how there 
> are so many of the same questions popping up on the web, yet no 
> answers.  The only answers you see are from those quasi-experts who just 
> keep repeating the same garbage: "reformat the stick", "use HP Key", 
> etc.  I guess some people have too much free time on their hands to 
> solve problems without really trying it themselves.  None of that works 
> on these mysteriously locked out sticks.
> 
> The problem is that a *LOT* of USB Flash drives are randomly becoming 
> Write Protected, and there seems to be no way to recover that I'm aware 
> of.  I've looked and looked.
> 
> Here's just one blurbs page showing the common problem:
> http://www.fixya.com/search/p454525-sandisk_1gb_cruzer_titanium_usb_flash/write_protected 
> 
> 
> I've got about 4 brands here (some were $40 or more) and all of them 
> became write protected or locked out when I inserted them in my home DVD 
> player that has a USB port on the front.  Now the player can't access 
> the sticks, nor any Windows system I have.  They all report only 8MB of 
> space and can't format using any tool.
> 
> Also, recently I've noticed a spike in the availability of USB drives in 
> Wal-Mart and other dept stores.  Hmmmm.  Tons of them hitting the 
> clearance racks for $5 and new ones stacked in bulk makes me wonder 
> what's going on here, really.
> 
> For this reason I've given up on USB sticks until I can fix the ones I 
> have.  If they can't be fixed, I'll have to put this one on my bamboozle 
> list.

Roger,

Do I understand you to say that the USB sticks were not write protected 
until used in the DVD player? I'd say the answer to my question is 
crucial in determining whether the sticks themselves are bad. Also, even 
if the USB sticks became write protected, you should still be able to 
read them. So, by "access the sticks" do you mean write to them?

The way I interpret what you posted is that the DVD player has somehow 
locked the USB sticks in a read-only mode that even your computer system 
can't unlock. That doesn't leave many possibilities for failure other 
than the DVD "burning out" something in the USB sticks. Since I don't 
know how these sticks work, I can't guess whether some electronic part 
or the actual memory got damaged.
Do you have anyway of testing whether the voltages on the USB port of 
the DVD player are within spec?