USB or Pen drives are magnificent and compact storage devices. These days USB pen drives are the most convenient source for data transfer between computers. The best part about them is that they have flash memory which can be easily written (data can be transferred faster) as compared to a CD or a DVD. But many times I have faced a problem on my USB drives that while copying data they prompt that the drive is write protected and when I googled about this I found that there are many people who are facing the same problem. So today in this tutorial I am going to guide you on how to remove write protection from a USB pen drive.
Before jumping on the process to remove write protection let’s first understand the Problem and its Causes.
Root Cause of Write Protection:
The root of the problem is that while data transfer process the system was not allowed to write data onto the drive because of write access issue.
There can be many reasons for this problem:
1. The First reason can be that the pc with which you have connected the Drive has certain registry settings that do not allow you to write data to your flash drives.
2. The second reason could be that the drive which you have connected is write protected as a part of hardware. For examples in certain flash drives there is a small switch (called a lock) as shown in the below image that can make the drive write enabled or write protected.
3. The third possible reason for the issue is that there is some malicious piece of code (generally called a virus) present in your drive that has denied the write access to your drive.
Possible solutions for the write protection issue:
1. First of all you should try to locate if there is any hardware lock on your USB drive, you can get an idea of this lock on your drive manual. If the hardware lock is present then keep the lock in write enabled position and this will remove the write protection problem.
2. If your system has write protection settings as a part of registry settings then you can override these setting with this [tool]. This zip package contains two files “DisableUSBWrite.reg” and “EnableUSBWrite.reg”. To enable your registry settings all you have to do is to run the “EnableUSBWrite.reg” file and it will resolve the problem.
3. If your USB drive contains some virus which has blocked the write access to your drive then you can scan your USB drive with some good antivirus to remove the virus and it will again allow the write access to your drive.
4. If the above three methods have not worked for you then you can download this tool [Neo 9]. Backup all your important data on the drive before running the Neo 9 tool. Neo 9 tool is able to get past the write protection and format the pen drive.
5. If Neo 9 hasn’t worked for you then you can manually format your drive using following steps:
- First backup all your important data on the drive.
- Press window+ R keys to open Run window.
- In the Run Window text field type diskmgmt.msc
- In the disk management window, select the pen drive, right click on it and click on Format.
- Now choose the File System and Allocation Unit Size.
- Click on OK and its done.
6. BUT if none of the methods listed above have solved your trouble then your pen drive might have gone corrupted, and needs to be replaced. If you want to retrieve your files from the corrupted USB drive then you can have a look at this post.
Article by Ankit
Ankit is the founder of Geek Revealed. He is tech Geek who loves to sit in front of his square headed girlfriend all day long. :D You can find Ankit on FaceBook or Google Plus
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