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How To Remove Write Protection From Read

The document provides 8 solutions to remove write protection from a read-only USB drive, including checking for a physical lock, disabling write protection in the Windows registry, using the Diskpart command, checking account permissions, ensuring the drive isn't full, scanning for viruses, formatting the drive, and verifying for bad sectors.

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74 views8 pages

How To Remove Write Protection From Read

The document provides 8 solutions to remove write protection from a read-only USB drive, including checking for a physical lock, disabling write protection in the Windows registry, using the Diskpart command, checking account permissions, ensuring the drive isn't full, scanning for viruses, formatting the drive, and verifying for bad sectors.

Uploaded by

desert2007sm
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to remove write protection from read-only USB

drive?

Solution 1: Check the drive for a physical lock


Many USB drive and SD cards have a physical lock switch which can turn on and turn
off write protection. Thus you need to examine whether the flash drive enables this
lock. Check the left or right edge to find out the switch. If the switch is in the Lock
side, just move it to the unlocked position. If this method can't solve the write
protection error, please try following solutions.

Solution 2: Disable write protection in Registry


Editing registry is another way to fix "The disk is write protected" error. Write
protection can be enabled in Windows registry and it is not easy to write on USB
devices. If you disable this feature via registry editor you can regain read and write
privileges on removable drives. Here are the steps you can follow.

Step 1 Open Registry Editor. Click Start button and enter "Regedit" in searching box

and press enter key. If you see prompt given by user account control, click Yes.
Alternatively, you can get Registry Editor by typing Regedit.exe in Run command
which can be opened by pressing Windows and R keys.
Step 2 In the left part of Registry Editor, navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Find out StorageDevicePolicies and open it. If it does not exist, you can create one.
Right click on Control and choose "New" and "Key" and name it as
StorageDevicePolicies.

Step 3 Click StorageDevicePolicies key in the left and right-click the empty area on

the right side. Select New and DWORD (32-bit) Value. Then change its name to
WriteProtect.
Step 4 Double click the WriteProtect key and enter 0 in the Value data box and click

OK. Close Registry Editor and re-plug your USB drive.

Solution 3: Use Command Prompt to remove write protection


Read and write attributes of UBS disk can be modified from Windows Command
Prompt with the help of a simple command line. You can follow steps here to clear
write attribute for flash drive or SD card.

Step 1 Open Command Prompt.

Click Start button and enter cmd in searching box. Then right click "cmd.exe" from
the searching list and choose "Run as administrator". Click Yes, if you get UAC
prompt.

Step 2 Type in diskpart and hit Enter.

Diskpart command is a Windows built-in tool for disk partitioning and it is able to
change values related to USB drives. If you got the error "The request could not be
performed because of an I/O device error. See the System Event log for more
information", the storage device might be physically damaged.
Step 3 Type the following commands one by one and press Enter key after each

command.

list disk

select disk #(# is the disk number for your USB drive which reports "The disk is
write protected" error. In the screenshot below, we should type select disk 1)

attributes disk clear readonly

Step 4 When you see "Disk attributes cleared successfully", you can close Command

Prompt and re-plug USB drive to check whether the issue is resolved.

Solution 4: Check account permission


The reason that you get the write protection error might be drive permission issue. It
is possible that you didn't provide permission to access particular storage device, so
you need to make sure you have set write privileges properly for user account.
Step 1 Open Command Prompt.

Open the Properties of USB flash drive by right-clicking and selecting Properties.

Step 2 A window named Removable Disk Properties appears and you need to click

"Security" tab. In the Permission for Everyone section, check whether the "Write"
feature is marked with a tick.

Step 3 If there is not a tick next to Write feature, select the use account and click
button Edit. Click on Add and then enter the object's name and click OK.
Solution 5: Make sure the USB drive isn't full
If your USB drive is running out of space, you may also get the write protection error
message when copying files to this device. You can see the free space on the disk via
checking it Properties on computer.

Step 1 Double click Computer / This PC from desktop to open Windows Explorer.

Step 2 Find your USB drive and right-click on it to select Properties. Then you can

see a pie chart showing Used space and Free space.

Solution 6: Ensure your USB drive is free from virus


It happens that flash drive may not be readable or writable if it infected by certain
virus. Every time you plug a USB drive to your computer, you need to scan it for virus
or malware, especially after it is used on public computers. Virus can delete or mess
files, fill USB drive with nonsense data or make drive unreadable. Thus you can
manually scan the flash drive with antivirus software and eliminate all possible
malware and virus.

Solution 7: Format the disk write-protected disk


In most cases, you can't format write-protected disks, as formatting process writes
new file system. When you try to format the drive, you'll get errors like "The disk is
wrote-protected" or "Windows was unable to complete the format". You can try the
method here to format it.

Warning: Formatting the drive wipes all data on it. If files on the drive are important
to you, you should recover data before performing formatting.
Step 1 Restart computer and press F8 before computer boots to system. Select Boot

Into Safe Mode option and press enter key.

Step 2 Press Win key + R to open Run dialog. Type in cmd in the Run window and

press Enter to get a black window.

Step 3 Type format f: (F is the drive letter of your removable storage you want to

format) and press enter. Be aware that if you enter a wrong drive letter, it'll erase all
data of that drive.

Solution 8: Verify bad sectors


Bad sectors on hard drive or flash memory are neither accessible nor writeable due
to physical or logical damage to disk platters, flash memory or transistors. If a disk
contains bad sectors, it'll become slow or stop working normally. You can follow this
guide to verify bad sectors for your storage device.

Step 1 Install and run DiskGenius and find the USB drive in question in the software.

Select the drive and click menu "Disk" to select "Verify or Repair Bad Sectors".
Step 2 Click "Start Verify" and the software starts to scan bad sectors. Finish

verifying bad sectors, DiskGenius will report the number of bad sectors.

Step 3 If the USB drive does have bad sectors, you can try repairing them with this

free partition manager. Please note that bad sector repairing damages data stored
on or near bad sectors, thus you need to backup data first before repairing.

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