How to remove write protection from a USB or flash drive

Update: We have remodeled the article to make it easier for you to read and understand it, but we have also added a New method by which you will be able to delete or modify a USB or flash drive that was blocked.

It may be that you have ever found yourself with a USB memory or a flash drive that you cannot delete or modify any of its content, something that at first is very frustrating.

On many occasions, they will leave it as impossible and there are even users who decide to throw it away since it is of no use to them.

This is something that you are not going to have to do again, since there are several methods by which we are going to be able to solve this incident in a more or less easy way.

That is why we advise you to continue reading, since we are going to tell you about all these ways to solve this problem right now.

How to remove write protection from a USB or SD memory:

Windows Registry Editor

The first method to remove write protection from USB What we are going to explain to you is to use the Windows Registry Editor.

After connecting the USB stick to your computer, click the Start button, search for the app Execute in the search engine, write regedit in the text box, and then click the key Enter to access the Registry Editor.

Then expand the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > StorageDevicePolicies. Then double click on the file WriteProtect and replace the 1 with a 0 in the section value information.

However, you may not find the folder StorageDevicePolicies. In case it does not appear in the directory, you will have to create it manually. To do this, follow the steps below:

• Right-click on the folder Control and select New > Key. Name the new folder StorageDevicePolicies.
• Mouse over the new folder StorageDevicePoliciesclick the right mouse button, select New > DWORD (32-bit) Valuename it WriteProtectand then open it and type 0 in the Security information section.

With a low level format

Did the first method not work for you? Do not panic, because another alternative that you have within your reach to remove write protection from USB by low level formatting.

This task can be done with the tool HDD Low Level Format Tool.

• After installing the application, connect the flash drive to the computer and start the program.
• Select the memory USB On the center screen, tap continueclick the tab Low Level Format.
• Make sure the box is unchecked Perform quick wipe and click on the button Format this device. Please note that all the contents will be lost, so please copy them to another folder before formatting.
• When the low-level format is finished, the write protection will be removed.

Remove write protection from DiskPart

Have the first two methods not served you well? remove write protection from your usb?

Don’t worry, you can also try this other alternative.

• To do this, connect the pendrive to the computer, go to Start > Run, type CMD.
• Click on Enter. Then type the command diskparttap on Enter and then agree to let the app make changes to the device.
• In the new window, type listdisk and click on Enter to view the drives connected to the computer.
• Look at the disk number corresponding to the USB, write select disk X [número de disco] and click on Enter.
• In the next step, type the command attributes disk clear readonly and click on Enteran action that will remove the write protection from the flash drive.

Modifying the options in the local group policy

To get the Local Group Policy Editor perform the action that we are requiring, we must have a higher version of Windows than Home, since it does not work in Windows 10 or Windows 11.

If we have the correct version of Windows, we must do the following:

• We connect the USB to the computer and access the Registry Editor by pressing Windows+R and enter the same command gpedit.mscand then press Enter.
• Now we must go to Computer Configuration> Administrative Templates> Removable Storage Access (Removable Disks).

That’s when we should disable all the options we need.

These are the following:

• Removable Disks: Deny Run Access (Removable Disks: Deny execute access)
• Removable Disks: Deny Read Access (Removable Disks: Deny read access)
• Removable Disks: Deny Write Access (Removable Disks: Deny write Access)

We click on each of the options and click on Edit, so that a screen appears where we can change the configuration of Not Configured (Not configured) to Disabled.

With all these methods we will be able to remove the write protection from a USB or flash drive.