How to erase a thumb drive
 

A company sent me a promotional thumb drive. Along with advertisement, it has some software that makes it show up as a read-only drive when attached to the computer.
So far I have tried a number of things to erase it and make it for personal use, but unsuccessful. I have even hooked it up to a Mac and a PC with Linux in it, but to no avail.

Any ideas to erase and/or format it?

What sort of drive is it? If it's the annoying sort of software that won't erase with a simple format then you'll usually find a tool to permanently remove it buried somewhere on the manufacturers site.

Try a few Google searches until you find what you're looking for.

I’ve had some drives that had a switch on the side that enables / disables write access. open it up and see what’s inside, but for the most part, you may be stuck, its a hardware lock, not software.

Is it the U3 stuff?