Is your USB pen drive having write protection causing problems? Then read on to learn to fix it.
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In this article:
- How USB Errors Affect Work
- What Happens in Write Protection Problems
- How to Fix Pen Drive Write Protection Issues
- Check and Use the Pen Drive
How to Remove USB/Pen Drive Write Protection
How USB Errors Affect Work
Sometimes, little problems with your hard drives and computer systems can create high levels of anxiety during working hours in offices, shops, and homes. The managers, employees, and workers lose their temperament, which disturbs the fluency of work.
To control this type of issue, we introduce a series of solutions for USB flash drives that features easy and simple steps for your convenience. By carefully studying our given solutions, you’ll fix the issue with ease and convenience in no time.
What Happens in Write Protection Problems

What is write protection? The feature of a device, like a USB, pen drive, external hard drive, or memory card, to prevent new information from being added to it.
USB flash drive or pen drive write protection issues have become a usual problem in our life in this day and age when these devices can easily be connected with personal computers. This problem is generally called external storage device problem.
When we try to delete some useless data from USB flash drive/pen drive or other storage devices like memory card and External HDD, then an instant pop-up message appears which says “The disk is write-protected”. Remove the write-protection or use another disk.
It is not an easy task to remove the write protection on a USB drive/pen drive because even formatting a write protected external drive is difficult. If a user attempts the formatting of a write protected drive then he/she will receive a message: “The disk is write protected”.
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How to Fix Pen Drive Write Protection Issues
If you want to fix the write protection issue of your USB flash/pen drive, then follow these simple steps and get rid of this problem so you can get on with your task:
- Connect your USB flash/pen drive with your PC, go to Start menu, open run prompt, and go to the next step.
- Type Regedit in the run prompt and press the Enter tab. After that, you will see that a registry editor has opened on your PC. Now, go ahead to the third step.
- Here, in the registry editor, navigate to the following instruction “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies.” Now, you’ve come to the second to the last step.
- After completing the given instruction in the third step, click on the key “WriteProtect” on the right side, then adjust the value in the “Values Data” section to 0. After that, press Enter or OK.
- Now, exit the registry editor, restart your PC, and check it.
Check and Use the Pen Drive
After completing these five steps, you’ve hopefully completely removed the write protection from your USB flash/pen drive with success.
Connect it with your computer, open, and use. Get data from your computer, paste in it, and utilize it. You can check your pen drive multiple times to confirm you’ve arrived at a solution for the problem.
These are some friendly solutions for unfriendly problems on USB flash or pen drives. After reading these easy steps, we hope that you won’t need the help of an expert or technician.
We also hope you can easily remember these simple steps. The problem may repeat in the future or it may happen to your friends and family members, so save this informative page for future solutions and share it with your friends.
Can you use your pen drive now after these easy steps? Share your write protection issue experience in the comments section below!
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About the Author
Mickey is a professional content writer and working as a freelance writer. He loves to write about electronics products.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on April 2, 2015, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.
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