Been trying to use balenaEtcher to burn a Hackintosh image to SanDisk USB drives, and each time it has failed, and at the same time ruined the drive, by making it “write protected”, something impossible to change, SanDisk support says the drives now need to be replaced.
Hi @pixelwash,
Thanks for writing in. We know for sure that Etcher is incapable of ruining drives - the only thing it does (code here for reference) is write the contents of the provided image file byte-by-byte to the drive of your choice. That said, you’re not the first person to write us about corruption issues, so it might help to read our post about it and see if any of the suggestions for recovering your drive exist there: Etcher broke my USB stick … or did it?
Let us know either way and we’ll do our best to help you move forward.
These are both brand new SanDisk drives, that I’ve used successfully to install windows and macintosh the day before, so they both USED to work.
Both were “bricked” by your software, they gave an error at the end, and then were locked after that. I’ve tried diskpart, and regedit, on two Windows 10 machines, and I’ve tried using Disk Utility and iPartition on the Mac. I’ll go through the additional suggestions in the comments also, and get back to you,
Thanks for your quick reply!
Well, I’ve tried everything in the post, and the comments below, and these two drives are still bricked ie write protected.
As to your assertion that your software does nothing that could possibly do this is obviously simply not true. Looking on the SanDisk website, it seems this write protection mechanism is something that is built into the firmware of these drives to protect data when the drive’s firmware controller thinks it has detected data corruption.
So your claim that it was not your software that causes the drive to brick itself is nothing but a lame word -play ie - a lie - that I could perhaps best illustrate with a physical analogy.
Say there is someone sitting on the ledge of the roof a high rise building, and you are walking along, near them, and behind them.
You give them a tiny push, gentle, but enough to move them a couple of inches, enough to push them off the ledge, which leads to their death, caused by the long fall to the ground. Your defense is that you did not kill them, your push was gentle and only moved them a couple of inches.
There should be a large clear warning on your software and your website should warning people using SanDisk drives NOT to use your software, as it is clearly capably of easily incorrectly triggering the failsafe locking feature built into this particular hardware……
Thanks for nothing, guys.
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Hi there,
SanDisk’s own support knowledge base has an entry for this issue.
https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8656/~/write-protect-error-on-usb-flash-drives
I would recommend reaching out to them for a replacement or refund, and there’s a link to do so at the bottom of the article. Etcher works much like any other imaging tool, like dd, the official Raspberry Pi imager, or Rufus. If your drives are truly unrecoverable after a few normal writes, this sounds like a hardware problem.
I experienced the exact same issue, and just lost two Sandisk USB flash drives. I thought the first was a fluke. The second led me to this thread.
While the issue may be with SanDisk, it is still really inconvenient and frustrating to wind up destroying drives. I was able to use Rufus to successfully format / flash a new key I picked up. There is definitely an issue with Etcher X SanDisk.
Perhaps blacklisting drives with known issues is an option, or publishing a compatibility list of some kind…anything that would have given me a notion this thread existed before I attempted to flash these keys would be acceptable.
Telling your users to ask the manufacturer for a refund is not. This root cause / issue might not be your fault technically, but it doesn’t mean your company should not act on it.
The fact that this issue was raised 9 months ago and nothing was done to help prevent your users from this experience is a not a good look. Sitting on this just hurts your reputation.
Edit: A solution I found was to follow these steps from belana with an additional step:
After running clean run convert mbr. Then you should be able to proceed. I also provided an exact size to the create partition primary command, not sure if that is necessary. Also note I am using Windows 10.
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Looks like I’ve destroyed two nearly-new SanDisk SD cards. I followed balena’s recovery instructions. When I got to the Windows 10 Command Prompt > DISKPART> “clean”, it returned with:
Virtual Disk Service error:
There is no media in the device.
If I buy another SD card, is there some other software that works like balenaEtcher SHOULD?
My mistake. Not SanDisk brand. One is made by Nexar. Can’t make out the manufacturer of the other SD card. Both are completely dead, so the problem is not with SanDisk.
Just bricked two new usb devices as well. One was a PNY 32gb, and the other was a san disk cruiser. Clean disk did not do anything.
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Okay, here is my update. I was able to recover my drives by using the format function on pendrivelinux’s universal usb installer. Both drives are now working, so it isn’t a hardware problem.
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Created this account just to say thanks!
Man you saved me 2 usb drives by pointing out this software
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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No problem! I’m glad you were able to get your devices working. Hopefully, Balena will figure this problem out at some point.
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Think same issue tried to install tails on a brand new Wd scandisk 32 GB ultra Shift
On a usb 3.0 port using balena echer portable.
The scandisk was readable before flashing the img file.
Process ended succesfully.
However now it isn;t recognized anymore.
Also not on another laptop
On w10 diskpart doesn’t see it.
Think I can throw the scandisk to the gabage bin
Windows 10 FIX INCLUDED BELOW.
Balena Etcher MOST CERTAINLY HAS A MAJOR MAJOR BUG ISSUE It most certainly does hurt USB sticks. It creates protected partitions of an arbitrary size, and makes the volume unrecognizable to Windows - NO IT IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE STICK MANUFACTURER Balena has a real problem, and gaslighting your users will simply kill your brand. That stuff about “USB sticks wear out”… Really? REEEEEEEELLLLYYYYYY?
Windows 10 Fix:
Disc Management.
Delete the poisonous partition.
Pendrivelinux.com Universal USB Intaller.
Pick a distro (have the .iso), SELECT THE FORMAT option.
Ignore the warning.
Do the thing.
When it is done, magically the 64GB generic stick all of a sudden has the full size again (was reduced to size of distro from before), and Windows has no issue opening it.
Get your #@$% together Balena - the issue is one thing, the gaslighting makes you…
Will never use Balena again.
Hey @MeTheGuy we are always working to improve Etcher and hopefully in the future will reach the point where we can provide an option to format a stick back to something readable by Windows. However I disagree with the gaslighting suggestion, we are only ever being transparent and sharing honestly what’s happening with ideas to help. Etcher simply puts the provided image file on the disk - if the image file creates partitions that can’t be read by Windows, you end up in the situation you were in. This isn’t anyone’s fault, just a truth that Windows can’t read all types of disk structure that exist in the world.
The fact you were able to recover the stick proves it wasn’t damaged and I’m glad you were able to use it in Windows again. As I say, hopefully we can improve the experience in the future but we also can’t control (and nor would we want to) what images contain and what can be flashed.
So you respond to an accusation of gaslighting by gaslighting.
Blame the image? Really?
Rufus, Universal, Yumi, and more do not do to USB drives what your Etcher does - using the SAME ISO.
I’ll give it to you that Etcher makes bootable sticks - but so do the others, only WITHOUT THE JACKED UP PARTITION.
Are you guys just incapable of honestly looking at bug reports? Got your self-esteem all mixed up in an imaginary perfection or something?
Rufus, Universal and Yumi do not make a poisoned partition, they do not screw up the format on the stick - Only Etcher does that, and it IS NEITHER THE STICK MANUFACTURER NOR THE ISO THAT DOES IT.
Seriously, what is wrong with you guys? Your code is jacked up somewhere.
STOP TRYING TO BLAME EVERYONE BUT YOURSELVES!!!
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There’s nothing more to say in that case other than ‘we’re working on it’. Note to self: do not try to help in future 
Wow what a response from a developer.
Just admit that your app has bugs. We never expect this to happen but seriously after seeing your response, gaslighting the problems and did not even try to help is making me wonder if you ever listen to user’s feedback.
So adorable 
I remember having this same problem a couple a months ago. I used etcher to flash my usb sandisk to install debian,arch and other linux OS to learn more about linux and install it on bare metal on my second SSD. And every time I would get the problem that both my OS (Linux,MS) was not able to read my USB anymore, so I googled my problem and saw a old blog post about this specific problem. The first time I thought that my USB went corrupt/was bricked. But this was not the case, I used the method that was shown in the blog post and it solved my problem. Some time I was not able to read the USB at all and had to use my linux environment to solve the problem. So I am sure this is the way to fix these problems. There might be another issue, or if you are doing the method wrong. I was able to fix my USB sandisk about 5-6 times with this method. So I can’t really see an issue here.
I created an account just to chime in here. And just because the developer is in such denial.
I have a brand new install of Windows 11. Literally, the only program installed on here is Balena, so that I could make a Proxmox install disk. It destroyed a brand new USB drive and it ruined my plans for the evening because I didn’t have another USB drive.
I thought I got a bad thumb drive so the next day I returned it and get a new one. I can’t possibly get two bad thumb drives in a row. Right? For a minute I thought I actually did get to bad drives but then I found this thread and it turns out both of them were good but Balena fried both of them. So now I’m going to try this suggestion to recover the drive with Pen Drive and I hope it works so I don’t waste another night that I had set aside for setting my computer up. I spent hours trying every imaginable suggestion I could find to recover the first dive and nothing worked. I’ll consider it a miracle if Pen Drive works.
So crazy for the developer to deny this issue exists with their software. It is 100% their software that is destroying USB drives.