Gfrktyl

I have some USB Drives that came pre-programmed. They are read-only and are being loaded as a CD Drive (ISO9660 / CDFS). I cannot format the drives via the standard "right-click >> format". I have been on the Internet trying to figure out a way to make these drives viable again, formatting them to FAT32 or NTFS, but can't find anything about how to do it.

I have tried using Windows CLI and other wipe programs, but none of them will recognize the drive as USB to give me the option to format or wipe it.

This is the controller information for my drive:

Volume: E:

Controller: Micov MW8209(MXT6208E) R

Possible Memory Chip(s): Not available

Flash ID: 2CAC9026

Flash CE: 1

VID: 1221

PID: 3234

Manufacturer: USB

Product: Disk

Query Vendor ID: USB

Query Product ID: Disk

Query Product Revision: 2.60

Physical Disk Capacity: 2103443456 Bytes

Windows Disk Capacity:  0 Bytes

Internal Tags: DJ2P-TH5L

USB Version: 2.00

Declared Power: 100 mA

ContMeas ID: 90FD-03-00

Microsoft Windows 10 x64 Build 16299

DISKPART CMD Image

Disk Management Image

That is not going to work.

The device presents itself to the computer as a USB connected CD-drive with a (read-only) CD-disc stuck in the drive. And Windows will only let you operate commands on that CD that are valid for CD-drives.

A USB CD-drive is a totally different type of USB device as a USB connected (hard)disk.

A (hard)disk can be re-partioned and re-formatted, but a CD-drive can't.

In some (very rare) cases the USB-chip inside the drive can be re-programmed to change its identity from CD-player to harddisk, but that requires a special program that is specific to that particular USB chip.

There is no such thing as a generic way to do that.

It is entirely possible that they have a special firmware (that appears as a CD storage device) loaded on the stick along with the CD image. As such you would need to identify the drive, and then locate an identical but non-readonly drive from which to copy the firmware for the USB flash controller.

Even that is non-trivial because you also probably need whatever firmware programming tool is required for that particular manufacturer of USB stick. These are not likely to be "standard" tools, but custom for every manufacturer and maybe every controller.

Given the fast paced and varied world of memory sticks, all fighting to reach the lowest manufacturing cost while retaining some level of profit, there are likely to be hundreds of different controllers. All of those controllers are going to have tens or hundreds of different firmwares depending on the flash chip, the flash size, the configuration, speed settings and a whole raft of other options.

You'll drive yourself insane spending weeks or more trying to resurrect a 1GB memory stick, purchasing various similar looking dodgy aftermarket sticks, all when you can buy eight 8GB sticks for $20 off Ebay and chuck out the useless piece of plastic.

Or it could just be that you need to fire up a Linux LiveCD to delete and recreate a sensible partition table.