Experiencing drive is write protected or Device is Write protected error while plugging a USB flash drive into your computer? Due to this error drive became unreadable, and don’t allow copying/paste data onto it. Also, some Causes users report that they cannot format the drive is write protected while formatting the USB drive. This is mostly caused when the Windows registry entry gets corrupted, your system administrator has placed limitations or the device itself is corrupt. Here follow the instructions below to Remove Write Protection From USB Pendrive, SD card, Flash drive, External Drive, etc.
Issue: Getting Error message “The disk is write-protected. Remove the write protection or use another disk.”While open or try to format an External USB/Pendrive.
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How To Remove Write Protection From USB Pendrive
Start with a basic check the device with a different USB port or on a different PC. Again, some external devices such as pen drives carry a hardware lock in the form of a switch. You need to see if the device has a switch and if it is pushed to protect the device from accidental writing. Also, scan the device for Viruses/malware infection, To make sure any virus or spyware not causing the issue.
Tweak Windows registry editor to remove write protection
This is the best effective tweak I have found to Remove write protection from pen drives, USB flash drives, SD card etc. With this tweak we are going to modify the registry editor. It is recommended to backup the registry database before making any modifications.
Press Windows key + R, type Regedit, and press the ok key to the open Windows registry editor. Then navigate to the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM> CurrentControlSet > Control > StorageDevicePolicies
Note: If you didn’t find the key StorageDevicePolicies, then right-click on the control and select new -> key. Name the newly created key as StorageDevicePolicies.
Now click on the new registry key StorageDevicePolicies and on the right pane right-click, select New > DWORD and give it the name WriteProtect.
Then Double-click on the “WriteProtect” key located in the right side pane and set the value to 0. Close the registry editor and reboot your pc to take effect the changes. On the next start check this time your removable drive is working properly without a write protection error.
Check Security Permissions
Also, check and make sure your current user has proper permissions to read/write on the disk drive.
- To check and grant permission, open this PC / My computer, Then Right-click the USB drive and select properties.
- In the properties window, select the Security tab.
- Then select the ‘user’ under the username and click on ‘Edit’.
- Check if you have the Write permissions. If you don’t, check the option “Full” for full permissions or “Write” for write permissions
Remove write protection from USB drive using the Diskpart command
This is another effective solution to remove write protection from pen drives, USB flash drives. To do this, first you need to open the command prompt with administrative privileges. Now, at the prompt, type the following and press Enter after each command:
Note: while performing the steps below, you may lose all data from your USB drive. If you have important data on that USB drive we recommend to backup them using a third-party backup utility.
diskpart
list disk
select disk x (where x is the number of your non-working drive – use the capacity to work out which one it is)
attributes disk clear readonly
clean
create partition primary
format fs=fat32 (you can swap fat32 for ntfs if you only need to use the drive with Windows computers)
exit
That’s it. remove the drive and restart Windows. On the next start insert the drive, Your drive should now work as normal in File Explorer. If it doesn’t, it’s bad news and there’s nothing more to be done.
