How can I disable write protection in my USB flash drive?

Question

My USB flash drive is currently unusable because it somehow (quite suddenly!) became write protected. I have googled around and tried many solutions to this problem, but none of them have worked so far. Here are some of the solutions I've tried:

The drive has no tangible switch or button.
Formatting the drive won't work, even in command line, even "low level formatting", because the drive is (after all) write protected.
Changing certain registry keys to 0 doesn't seem to work.
Repair_Neo2.9.exe says "USB Flash Disk not found!"

One factor that may make it more difficult to find a solution: I have no idea what the make or model is, because I received the USB flash drive from my university as a gift. So if anyone knows how to find the make and model, that alone might be helpful.

Any ideas? Thanks.

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 05 '12 at 06:25

4

Have you tried in linux version like Ubuntu/Fedora?

I had experienced this problem some years back and I plugged that USB flash drive in one of my linux live CD and formatted the drive and it worked well.

answered Oct 05 '12 at 06:25

Athiruban

159

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 27 '16 at 22:23

1

Here is the solution to remove write protection in pen drive. please do the following steps

Start -> Run -> Regedit -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Currentcontrolset\control\storagedevicepolicies

Edit the modify the binary data set value '0'

After editing, complete the GPupdate in cmd.exe.

edited Jul 27 '16 at 22:23

The.u

3

answered Mar 06 '13 at 05:35

Nipam Dave

11
1

Carl B · Answer 3 · 2012-10-07T17:25:51.090

If you can access the files, you may be facing a lack of permission to do more than that. You can check the permission level and change it to see if that give you full access to the drive.

Go to Computer
Right click your thumb drive
Click on Properties
Click the Security tab
Select Everyone and click the Edit button in the dialoge box
In the Allow column, check the Full Control box
Click Apply and OK

This should ensure that Access Control is ruled out as the souce of the Write Protected situation.

OR -

Use DiskPart Open a command prompt window for the windows version you are using

In the command prompt type diskpart
Type list volume to identify the thumb drives volume #.
Type select volume # where # is your thumb drives # and press enter.
Type attributes disk clear readonly press enter. You should get text back saying Disk attributes cleared successfully

Remove the thumb drive, then reinsert into USB.

Check the drive in question, you should now be able to access the disk with full permissions.

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 08 '13 at 20:41

I have this problem all the time with a WD external USB drive on my laptop running Windows 7. I used the DISKPART suggestion above but after I unplugged and reconnected the USB drive I still had the problem.

So I redid the DISKPART – remove readonly attributes and immediately ran a FORMAT on the USB drive. That worked.

I fully expect this problem will reoccur. Something is going on where the USB drive is being set to "write protect" by the Windows OS. Very strange.

score -1 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 02 '13 at 12:07

I made it in Diskpart, but the media had a virus, so this is the out screen:

==============>>>
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> attributes disk clear readonly

Disk attributes cleared successfully.

DISKPART> attributes disk
***Current Read-only State : Yes***
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : No
Pagefile Disk  : No
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : No
Clustered Disk  : No

DISKPART>
==============>>>

How can I disable write protection in my USB flash drive?

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