I apologize for the title, but this is exactly how the question is asked when, when working with a USB flash drive or SD memory card, Windows reports the error “The disk is write-protected. Remove protection or use another disk" (The disk is write-protected). In this instruction, I will show you several ways to remove protection from a flash drive or memory card and tell you where it comes from.
I note that in different cases the message that the disk is write-protected may appear for various reasons - often due to Windows settings, but sometimes due to a damaged flash drive. I will touch on all the options and the corresponding methods for removing protection in Windows 10, 8.1 or Windows 7. If something is not entirely clear, then at the bottom of the article there is a video that demonstrates almost all the ways to fix the error.
Another way that can help remove a USB disk error that suddenly shows a writing error is to remove protection on the command line.
To do this, do the following:
Close the Command Prompt, unplug and reconnect the flash drive, then try to do something with the flash drive, such as formatting it or writing down some information, to see if the error goes away.
Below is a video on this error, which shows all the methods described above. Perhaps she can help you figure out the problem.
I hope one of the approaches helped you solve the problem. If not, I also recommend checking your flash drive on another computer or laptop: this will allow you to determine whether the write protection is a consequence of the system parameters or whether the drive itself is to blame.
A flash drive is a universal and very convenient means of storing information. However, questions may arise when working with it. Surely many users have encountered the fact that it is not possible to write anything to a flash drive, since it is protected. So, from this article you will learn how to format a flash drive if it is write-protected.
But before you take any serious action, make sure that the problem is write protection. It is also possible that the computer refuses to write information to the media due to damage to the USB port or the flash drive itself. In addition, there are external drives that have a special write-protect switch on the case. It’s also worth checking, just in case, whether there are any viruses on the media. If this is not the case, there are several ways to remove write protection.
One of the simplest and most frequently used methods. To work with diskpart, you do not need to download any third-party programs; it is already installed on computers with the Windows XP and later operating systems. Procedure:
To launch it, press the Win and R keys simultaneously and enter “gpedit.msc” in the window that appears. Open the branch: Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Access to Removable Storage Devices. Here at the top there is an item “Removable drives: prohibit writing/reading”. Check the box next to “Disable”. Now you can try formatting the media again. If the “Disable” option was already there, it means that the problem is not in system limitations, but in the flash drive itself, and you need to try another method.
Sometimes formatting may be prohibited due to incorrect registry settings. To verify this, open the command line as an administrator and type “regedit”. The Registry Editor window opens. Select the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder, from there we go down to System and then to CurrentControlSet, there we click on Services and then on USBSTOR. Several parameters will be displayed to us at once, but we are only interested in Start. Its value (indicated in parentheses after the code) should be 3. If there is any other number, then you need to correct it. To do this, right-click on the parameter, select the function change and in the panel that opens, type 3 (the selected number system does not matter). If the registry value was initially correct, then you will have to try to remove the protection from the flash drive using another method.
You can also try another way to solve the problem without leaving the registry. Using the path already described above, we get to the CurrentControlSet folder, but from there we go to the Control folder. It should have a StorageDevicePolicies section. Here we are interested in the WriteProtect parameter. Its value must be 0 in hexadecimal. If the parameter is specified incorrectly, we forward it. If the value is correct initially, feel free to exit the registry and try to remove the protection in a different way.
This utility is already installed on the system. Open the command line and enter “diskmgmt.msc”. We find the Disk that we want to format. Right-click on it and click on “Delete Volume” and confirm. Now in the context menu we find the “Create volume” option, select “primary partition”. We leave all the settings in it as default.
This is a fairly effective and extremely simple application, which, however, will have to be downloaded from the Internet. There are only two functions in the application menu: Format and Restore. The first function will completely delete all data from the flash drive, and the second will return the factory settings (that is, it will remove write protection).
Some large manufacturers create websites for their customers where they can get free advice or even replace faulty media. You can also find special formatting software on them.
How to remove write protection from a flash drive - instructions! The “disk is write-protected” or “flash drive is write-protected” error usually happens at the most inopportune moment. If you started reading this article, then you turned out to be one of those “lucky” people who at one point decided to put something on your flash drive, but in the end received a message from the system that you cannot write data to the disk and now this very protection needs to be removed. A person who has encountered something like this for the first time reasonably appears completely bewildered. Let's try to find out the reasons why we can't write files to a flash drive and figure out how to fix this problem.
It is quite logical that such a problem arises if the operating system queries the disk, but does not receive write rights. In this case, it is not possible to write files, although at the same time data can be read without any problems. The reasons for this behavior vary, but clearly fall into two groups:
It is important to understand that both types of problems can happen both on the flash drive and on your computer.
By analogy with the reasons for the “media is write-protected” error, write protection methods can also be divided. A classic example of hardware protection would be the presence of a special switch (on the body of a flash drive) that turns on and off the ability to write to a flash drive.
Software protection consists of various types of software systems designed to prevent unauthorized use of the drive.
When deciding how to remove the protection if “The disk is write protected”, first of all check if there is a special small switch on the case. It is always present on SD cards, and is somewhat less common on regular USB drives. Accidental switching is not uncommon when a flash drive is carried in a pocket.
Also, be sure to check the functionality of the flash drive in other USB ports, or even better, on another computer. If you are the owner of a desktop computer with a system unit, it is preferable to check the flash drive by connecting to the ports on the back wall of the system unit. The problem may lie in poor contact, poor-quality wires, or failure of the USB controller.
After making sure that there is no mechanical protection problem, we proceed to checking the software.
By default, the flash drive is formatted using the FAT32 file system. A small number of users are aware of the limitation in this file system to the maximum file size of 4Gb. This results in a twofold situation: formally there is permission to write, but a message about the impossibility of doing so appears. If you need to transfer large files, format the drive using NTFS - a system where there are no such restrictions. To do this, open “My Computer,” right-click on your removable drive and select “Format.” In the window that appears, in the “File system” line, select NTFS, click “Start”.
Important! It is always better to use “safe removal” before removing the flash drive from the connector. Due to some features regarding flash drives formatted in NTFS, this should be a mandatory rule.
The blocking can be set in the Windows registry. The Windows key combination + R will open the Run window, type regedit and click OK.
In the editor window, go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies section, where you will see the WriteProtect parameter on the right. Double-click on the parameter to bring up a dialog for changing the parameter, set the value to 0. The StorageDevicePolicies section may be missing and you will have to create it. To create, right-click the previous Control section, select “New > Section”, the name should be StorageDevicePolicies. In the empty area on the right side of the window of the newly created section, right-click again, select “New > DWORD Value” in the menu, select bitness 64 or 32, depending on the bitness of your system. Name the parameter WriteProtect and set the value to 0 as described above. Be sure to reboot and check the result.
Make sure that recording to removable devices is not prohibited by group policy. Similarly to launching the Registry Editor, execute gpedit.msc, which will bring up the “Local Group Policy Editor”. Follow the branches “Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - System - Access to Removable Storage Devices”. On the right, check the “Removable drives: Deny writing” option. It should be disabled or not set. If the option is enabled, double-click on it, select Disable, and apply the selection. Don't forget to reboot before checking.
Check the system with a good antivirus with the latest databases. There are a number of malicious programs that block the ability to work normally with connected portable storage devices.
A significant number of Windows users prefer the Total Commander file manager, which offers extensive features and ease of use. It is important to understand that Total Commander is essentially just a convenient add-on for Windows, so everything described in the article applies to it. However, there are nuances. Try copying your files in Windows Explorer, if there are no problems with copying in Explorer, open “Configuration > Settings: File Operations” and select “Automatically select copy method”. The authors of some builds of this manager set settings that cause such failures.
How to remove protection from a write-protected flash drive using the command line. The method is a little more complicated. Find the Command Prompt application in the Start menu and run it with administrator rights. Next, enter the following commands one by one, confirming each entry by pressing Enter.
Attention! All contents of the flash drive will be deleted permanently!
Flash drive manufacturers take care of solving various types of problems that arise with their products, releasing proprietary utilities for restoring problematic devices. Do not forget that you must run any of these utilities with administrator rights. These useful programs can be freely downloaded from the respective manufacturers' websites. Transcend calls it , Silicon Power calls it , Adata calls it , Kingston calls it . Their use is quite simple and does not cause difficulties even for beginners.
The programs listed below are designed for advanced users and you should read the documentation before using them. Independent developers release their own universal programs that are not tied to any vendor, but have similar functionality.
Popular representatives:,AlcorMP.
The latter only works with drives on the controller of the same name, but all have the same task - to help restore the problematic device. When faced with finding a solution to how to remove protection from a flash drive, as a last resort, you should try to reflash it. Flash Drive Information Extractor will tell you complete information about the type of controller, the memory used and even the production date.
Kingston Format Utility is a utility for improving the performance of a flash drive and eliminating all common problems with it...
MiniTool Power Data Recovery - will recover flash drives quickly and easily
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a specialized program for recovering external storage media, such as flash cards,…
Good afternoon, dear readers and subscribers of the blog site. I'll tell you a short story about how people break USB flash drives and how to restore them later. My colleague gave one of the employees a flash drive to transfer data from one computer to another. The user completed the transfer and gave us the media. Next, my colleague inserted this flash drive and tried to write something on it and was very surprised that it was not visible at all, only a window immediately appeared that it needed to be formatted, we tried and got an error " Disc is write protected". Let me show you how to solve this problem and return the media to working condition.
Let me show you what the error looks like. On the first window for formatting a removable disk, you will see “The disk is write protected.”
By clicking ok, you will see another interesting warning:
Windows cannot format. Check that the drive and disk connections are correct, make sure the disk is not read-only, and then try again. For more information, see Help by searching for information about read-only files and how you can change
If you open Disk Management, you will find that the media has a Read-Only status.
There is also a situation where the flash drive is visible and opens, but writing to it does not give anything, even if you take into account that write rights are present on the “Security” tab. Here you already see the message "."
We can easily cure all these symptoms.
Let's look at the most common reasons that lead to failure of a USB storage device, both at the physical and logical levels:
When everything is clear with the reasons, then let's start practicing. I’ll immediately show you a working method that removes the Read-Only media lock. The Formatter SiliconPower utility will help you with this.
You can download Formatter SiliconPower either from the official website or from me.
The utility is completely portable and does not require installation. Launch Formatter SiliconPower.
Before starting, I advise you to leave only the non-working flash drive on
You will see a window in which you will be asked to format, agree and click “Format”
You will be warned that all data will be deleted, we continue the operation.
The recovery process begins; under no circumstances remove the flash drive until you see a window that everything was successful.
This is what the window looks like, that everything is done and now the USB drive is not write-protected and works in your usual mode.
This method will help in 99 percent of cases when your flash drive is visible, but does not allow you to write anything on it. The whole problem here is in one registry key that needs to be corrected or recreated. And so, press the Win and R buttons at the same time, and in the “Run” window that opens, write regedit.
Go to the section:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
If there is no such section, then you will have to create it via right-click and give it the name StorageDevicePolicies
In the StorageDevicePolicies section, you need to create a "QWORD (64-bit) Value" registry key named WriteProtect and give it a value of 0.
If the WriteProtect key was already in your registry and had a value of 1, then it prohibited formatting the flash drive and wrote that the disk is write protected, change it to zero.
After making changes to the registry, you need to restart your computer, otherwise the settings will not take effect.
If your removable storage device still displays the message “The USB disk is write-protected,” don’t rush to get upset, we have the Diskpart utility in stock. You can run it through the Windows command line as an administrator.
As you can see, the diskpart utility has worked, now you can check the result of its execution.
There are also specific methods for USB drives from certain manufacturers, for example, for Trancend, there is a special JetFlash Online Recovery utility.
As you can see, everything was completed successfully and the flash drive opened quietly.
As you can see, the error with the inability to read or format a flash drive can be solved very simply, for this there are both built-in utilities and utilities from manufacturers, choose the method that suits you and repair it, if you have questions, write them in the comments, I will try to answer them, thanks to all.
Useful advice from user Sergey (Fin)
Now I dissected the corpse and discovered oxidation of the USB contacts. Radio amateurs have a spray called Contact CLEANER, so I used it. The contacts are shiny, the flash drive is read, written and formatted. I hope she will continue to please me with her performance (although this is already a big question, her total age is about 8 years).
Ivan, thank you for the article and all the best!
I hope it helps the rest of your readers.
PS: for those who washed the flash drive or dropped it in water, disassemble it, dry it, then clean the board itself on both sides with a toothbrush and alcohol. It should come to life - I did it myself several times =) Good luck!
Hello everyone friends. Today, I want to tell you about how to remove write protection from a flash drive in the shortest possible time and without much difficulty. The thing is that the other day, as usual, I wanted to copy a certain file to a flash drive, but in response I saw a message of a similar nature: “The disk is write-protected. Remove protection or use another disk." What kind of things are these? After all, such cases had never happened before and everything worked perfectly. As a result, I began to look for ways to solve this problem, which I will discuss in this article.
First, let's look at the main reasons why write protection may appear:
— The integrity of the file system was violated, for example, due to improper use of the flash drive (for example, after finishing work with the flash drive, the function of safely removing the device is not used)
— The flash drive was attacked and infected with viruses. The most common reason.
— Trivial damage to the flash drive itself. She fell somewhere or was subject to a strong blow.
— A special switch is installed on the flash drive, which prevents infection by viruses and puts write protection on the flash drive.
We have figured out the reasons, now I will tell you how to remove write protection from a flash drive using software and mechanical means.
As for the mechanics, everything is very simple here. Carefully inspect your flash drive for the presence of a so-called switch, which mechanically installs protection on the flash drive. Below, I have given several examples of flash drives with such a switch. If yours has such a switch, just move it to the other side and everything will work.
If the situation with the switch does not solve anything, we move on to software methods for removing protection from a flash drive.
1) In order to remove protection from a flash drive using the operating system registry, we need to click the Start button and enter regedit (command for editing the registry) in the search field. After that, right-click (right-click) on the icon that appears and select the item – Run as administrator.
2) Now we need to find a special section called – StorageDevicePolicies, which is responsible for prohibiting writing to the flash drive.
It should be located in the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
Important! If you do not find this partition at the specified path, you must create it manually. To do this, go to the parent section Control, right-click on it and select – Create – Section. Give it a name – StorageDevicePolicies.
3) Go to the StorageDevicePolicies section we created and right-click in the right area of the registry. Select the menu item - New - DWORD value (32 bits). We call it an arbitrary name, for example, WriteProtect.
4) Now we just have to make sure that the value of the WriteProtect parameter is 0. To do this, double-click on this parameter with the mouse or right-click on WriteProtect and select the menu item - Change.
Important! If the value in this parameter is set to 1, then change it to 0 and click OK.
5) Close the registry editor window, remove our flash drive from the device, and reboot it. After the reboot, insert the flash drive and check whether files can be written to it.
If the option of removing protection using the registry did not work, let's try this operation through the command line interface.
For this:
1) Press the Start button, enter the command diskpart, then right-click on the icon that appears and select the item – Run as administrator.
2) In the window that appears, enter the command – list disk and press the Enter key. A list of drives will appear in front of us, in which we need to determine the serial number of your flash drive.
This is easy to do using the size of your flash drive. For example, my flash drive is 8 GB in size, so I can easily identify it in the list of media. If you don’t know the size of your flash drive, then double-click on the My Computer icon (usually located on the desktop) and see what size your flash drive is (RMB - Properties).
After you have selected the desired media, enter the command select disk your media number(I have this 1). Press Enter and a message with the selected disk should appear.
3) Enter the command - attributes disk clear readonly, which clears the read-only attributes for the flash drive and removes write protection from it.
Press Enter and if everything is done correctly, the message “Disk attributes successfully cleared” will appear in front of you.
Close the diskpart utility window.
Sometimes there are cases where the write ban is enabled through the Group Policy Editor in the OS itself. Let's check it out:
1) Click the Start button and enter the command gpedit.msc in the search bar, then press the Enter button.
2) In the window that appears, follow the path: Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - System - Access to removable storage devices and in the right area of the window select the item - Removable drives: Deny writing.
At this point, we pay attention to the condition that appears next to the inscription. If the status is set to Enabled, then double-click on it and select Disable in the new window. Click Apply and OK.
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool– a universal program that fits almost any flash drive and allows you to quickly remove protection. program, run the exe file (this program does not require installation) which is located in the archive and the program itself will detect your flash drive. After that, you need to select the type of file system into which the program will format and click the Start button.
JetFlash Recovery Tool - this program is only suitable for flash drives from the following manufacturers: JetFlash, A-DATA and Transcend. program, carry out a simple installation, and after launching it, press the Start button.
Apacer Repair – this program only works with Apacer flash drives. If you have just such a flash drive, then in order to remove the program from the flash drive, simply launch it and follow the instructions on the screen.
AlcorMP is one of the best programs for carrying out such actions. It works with AlcorMP controllers. archive, unpack it and run the file AlcorMP.exe from the folder itself. If your flash drive works on an AlcorMP controller, then the inscription in line G will be black and this means that everything is in order and you can work. If the inscription is red, then working with this flash drive is impossible. In order to remove write protection from a flash drive, simply press the Start button (A) after setting the switch to Russian.
An important nuance. All programs for working with flash drives must be run with administrator rights. To do this, right-click on the program launch shortcut or on the program itself and from the context menu select – Run as administrator.
A couple of points. Before using the above programs, I recommend carrying out preliminary steps and if they do not help, only then resort to the help of software. What is this connected with? If you use software, all your files will be deleted as the flash drive is formatted. To prevent this from happening, use the methods below, and if they do not help, then you can already start working with the programs.
1) If your flash drive is infected with viruses (suspicious files on it), then scan it and remove all viruses found.
2) There are times when it is enough to change the USB port and the data from the flash drive can be read perfectly.
3) Be sure to check for a security switch on the flash drive. If it is in “Lock” mode, then move it to the other side.
That's all the advice that I wanted to give you on the topic of how to remove write protection from a flash drive. I hope this article will help you in solving this problem.
That's all for me. See you again!!!
