How to Write-Protect Your USB Flash Drive Many a time, it becomes necessary for us to write protect our USB flash drive so as to ... protect it from viruses and other malware programs. Because flash drives are so popular and most widely used to move data between computers, they are the prime target for attackers as a means to get infections spread around the computer world. Also, since USB
drive is not a Read-Only Memory (ROM), the data inside it can easily be modified or deleted by malware programs. But unfortunately, most of the new flash drives do not come with a write-protect feature as the manufacturers wish to cut down the cost of production. Hence, the only way to write-protect your USB flash drives is to enable this feature on your own computer. This can be done by adding a small entry to the Windows registry which acts as a switch that can be enabled to make use of the write protection or disabled to allow write access. Just follow these steps:
1. Open the Registry Editor (Open the
“Run” dialog box, type regedit and hit
“Enter”).
2. Navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet\Control\
3. Create a New Key named as
StorageDevicePolicies. To do this right-
click on Control, and click on New->Key
and name it as StorageDevicePolicies.
4. Now right-click
on StorageDevicePolicies and create a
New->DWORD (32-bit) Value and name
it as WriteProtect.
5. Double-click on WriteProtect and set
the Value data to 1.
Now the right-protection for USB
drives is enabled on your computer (no
restart required) and thus it would not
be possible for anyone or any program
to add/delete the contents from your
USB flash drive. Any attempt to copy or
download the files onto the USB drive
will result in the following error
message being displayed.
To revert and remove the write-
protection, all you need to do is just
change the Value data for WriteProtect
(Step-5) from 1 back to 0. Now write
access to all the USB devices is re-
enabled.
drive is not a Read-Only Memory (ROM), the data inside it can easily be modified or deleted by malware programs. But unfortunately, most of the new flash drives do not come with a write-protect feature as the manufacturers wish to cut down the cost of production. Hence, the only way to write-protect your USB flash drives is to enable this feature on your own computer. This can be done by adding a small entry to the Windows registry which acts as a switch that can be enabled to make use of the write protection or disabled to allow write access. Just follow these steps:
1. Open the Registry Editor (Open the
“Run” dialog box, type regedit and hit
“Enter”).
2. Navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet\Control\
3. Create a New Key named as
StorageDevicePolicies. To do this right-
click on Control, and click on New->Key
and name it as StorageDevicePolicies.
4. Now right-click
on StorageDevicePolicies and create a
New->DWORD (32-bit) Value and name
it as WriteProtect.
5. Double-click on WriteProtect and set
the Value data to 1.
Now the right-protection for USB
drives is enabled on your computer (no
restart required) and thus it would not
be possible for anyone or any program
to add/delete the contents from your
USB flash drive. Any attempt to copy or
download the files onto the USB drive
will result in the following error
message being displayed.
To revert and remove the write-
protection, all you need to do is just
change the Value data for WriteProtect
(Step-5) from 1 back to 0. Now write
access to all the USB devices is re-
enabled.
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