Can't format usb flash drive - "permission denied"

The problem is when I put my 4gb flash drive in, the computer doesn't recognize it and doesn't show up on the desktop. So I go into Disk Utility and try to format it to maybe fix it that way, but when I try to, it says format failed, permission denied. Please help

Just curious, is your account an admin account?

If so you would need to change the permissions under system preferences.
I will do some searching and come back with what I find.

Ok i'm back.
I was messing around with my laptop troubleshooting this problem and I found out that I get the same issue!

What I did to fix it is, sticking the flash drive into another usb port. For some reason some mac computers get messed up with the power flow to the usb port. This problem that you are having is highly probable that your computer is not giving the desired amount of power to the port.

To sum things up, if you are using a laptop, plug in the charger. And change the usb port that you are using.

Now if the solutions that I provided above still do not work try this.
Go into disk utility and change the name of the flash drive, now hit erase.


Get back to us and tell us how its going!

-Patrick

yarjarrarr said:

The problem is when I put my 4gb flash drive in, the computer doesn't recognize it and doesn't show up on the desktop. So I go into Disk Utility and try to format it to maybe fix it that way, but when I try to, it says format failed, permission denied. Please help

Click to expand...

Many flash drives have a small switch that controls whether or not the drive can be written to. Check to see if you do have a switch on the drive and that it's not set for write protect.

Regards.

Thanks for your help, guys.
Yes, I do have an admin account. I tried to find where to change the permissions but couldn't find it.
I also tried putting it in the left and right usb port, but nothing changed.
And the flash drive doesn't seem to have any switch to turn writing on/ off. It's just flat all around.

Oh yeah, and I tried changing the name and erasing it in Disk Utility, but still no luck.

If it's any help, I tried repairing the flash drive in D.U. but it said:

Verify and Repair volume "disk1"
** /dev/disk1
could not read boot block (Permission denied)
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.


I just to format it on windows, but it said Windows cannot format this drive.

You could have a bad flash drive since another system was not able to format.