Retail Windows usb drives
| Basic Information | |
|---|---|
| Release Year | 2015 |
| Product Type | Hardware and software |
| In Production | Yes |
| Official Website | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-home/dg7gmgf0krt0 |
Since the release of Windows 10 Microsoft has sold usb drives with an installer preloaded[1] but these drives are deeply write protected with no official way to reformat to reuse it for anything other than the manufacturing year’s windows installer
Consumer impact summary
These usb drives are artificially unwritable preventing reuse one would expect from a usb flash drive. There is no indication on the Windows 11 22h2 usb drive box exterior that it is not rewritable.
Microsoft has undoubtedly sold millions of non rewritable windows usb drives creating needless ewaste
Incidents
This is a list of all consumer protection incidents related to this product. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Retail Windows usb drives category.
Shortly after the sale of these drives people went to forums seeking help on why their drive can’t be written to no matter what they tried [2]