“Storage is write protected” how to remove protection on a phone or flash drive. What to do: the flash drive is write protected, how to remove the protection
As always, the problem happened at the most inopportune moment. If you started reading this article, then you turned out to be one of those “lucky” people who at one point decided to put something on your flash drive, but in the end received a message from the system that you cannot write data to the disk and now this very protection needs to be removed. A person who has encountered something like this for the first time reasonably appears completely bewildered. Let's try to find out the reasons why we can't write files to a flash drive and figure out how to fix this problem.
Content:
Causes of the error “The disk is write-protected. Remove protection or use another disk."
It is quite logical that such a problem arises if the operating system queries the disk, but does not receive write rights. At the same time, it is not possible to write files, although at the same time data can be read without any problems. The reasons for this behavior vary, but clearly fall into two groups:
- Software glitch.
- Hardware failure.
It is important to understand that both types of problems can happen both on the flash drive and on your computer.
Types of write protection
By analogy with the causes of errors, write protection methods can also be divided. A classic example of hardware protection would be the presence of a special switch (on the body of a flash drive) that turns on and off the ability to write to a flash drive.
Software protection consists of various types of software systems designed to prevent unauthorized use of the drive.
When deciding how to remove the protection if “The disk is write protected”, first of all check if there is a special small switch on the case. It is always present on SD cards, and is somewhat less common on regular USB drives. Accidental switching is common when a flash drive is carried in a pocket.
Also, be sure to check the functionality of the flash drive in other USB ports, or even better, on another computer. If you are the owner of a desktop computer with a system unit, it is preferable to check the flash drive by connecting to the ports on the back wall of the system unit. The problem may lie in poor contact, poor-quality wires, or failure of the USB controller.
Software removal of write protection
After making sure that there is no mechanical protection problem, we proceed to checking the software.
By default, the flash drive is formatted using the FAT32 file system. A small number of users are aware of the limitation in this file system to the maximum file size of 4Gb. This results in a twofold situation: formally there is permission to write, but a message about the impossibility of doing so appears. If you need to transfer large files, format the drive using NTFS - a system where there are no such restrictions. To do this, open “My Computer,” right-click on your removable drive and select “Format.” In the window that appears, in the “File system” line, select NTFS, click “Start”.
Important! It is always better to use “safe removal” before removing the flash drive from the connector. Due to some features regarding flash drives formatted in NTFS, this should be a mandatory rule.
The blocking can be set in the Windows registry. The Windows key combination + R will open the Run window, type regedit and click OK.
In the editor window, go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies section, where you will see the WriteProtect parameter on the right. Double-click on the parameter to bring up a dialog for changing the parameter, set the value to 0. The StorageDevicePolicies section may be missing and you will have to create it. To create, right-click the previous Control section, select “New > Section”, the name should be StorageDevicePolicies. In the empty area on the right side of the window of the newly created section, right-click again, select “New > DWORD Value” in the menu, select bitness 64 or 32, depending on the bitness of your system. Name the parameter WriteProtect and set the value to 0 as described above. Be sure to reboot and check the result.
Make sure that recording to removable devices is not prohibited by group policy. Similarly to launching the Registry Editor, execute gpedit.msc, which will bring up the “Local Group Policy Editor”. Follow the branches “Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - System - Access to Removable Storage Devices”. On the right, check the “Removable drives: Deny writing” option. It should be disabled or not set. If the option is enabled, double-click on it, select Disable, and apply the selection. Don't forget to reboot before checking.
Check the system with a good antivirus with the latest databases. There are a number of malicious programs that block the ability to work normally with connected portable storage devices.
A significant number of Windows users prefer the Total Commander file manager, which offers extensive features and ease of use. It is important to understand that Total Commander is essentially just a convenient add-on for Windows, so everything described in the article applies to it. However, there are nuances. Try copying your files in Windows Explorer, if there are no problems with copying in Explorer, open “Configuration > Settings: File Operations” and select “Automatically select copy method”. The authors of some builds of this manager set settings that cause such failures.
Remove write protection in the command line (cmd)
How to remove protection from a write-protected flash drive using the command line. The method is a little more complicated. Find the Command Prompt application in the Start menu and run it with administrator rights. Next, enter the commands below one by one, confirming each entry by pressing Enter.
Attention! All contents of the flash drive will be deleted permanently!
- Diskpart– launches the disk management utility;
- list disk– will display all disks connected to the system, you need to determine which of them is your flash drive, for which you can use the size of the disk;
- select disk X– targets the program to a disk; instead of X, specify the number of the desired disk;
- detail disk– will show detailed information about the selected disk to ensure that the choice is correct;
- attributes disk clear readonly– resets the read-only attribute;
- clean– all volumes and partitions on the disk will be deleted;
- create partition primary– recreates the main partition;
- formatfs=fat32– formats the partition using the FAT32 file system (you can select the NTFS file system with the commandfs=ntfs);
- exit– terminates the program.
Programs for removing write protection
Flash drive manufacturers take care of solving various types of problems that arise with their products, releasing proprietary utilities for restoring problematic devices. Do not forget that you must run any of these utilities with administrator rights. These useful programs can be freely downloaded from the respective manufacturers' websites. Transcend calls it , Silicon Power calls it , Adata calls it , Kingston calls it . Their use is quite simple and does not cause difficulties even for beginners.
The programs listed below are designed for advanced users and you should read the documentation before using them. Independent developers release their own universal programs that are not tied to any vendor, but have similar functionality.
Popular representatives:,AlcorMP.
The latter only works with drives on the controller of the same name, but all have the same task - to help restore the problematic device. When faced with finding a solution to how to remove protection from a flash drive, as a last resort, you should try to reflash it. It will tell you complete information about the type of controller, the memory used and even the production date.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a specialized program for recovering external storage media, such as flash cards,…
For a modern person, a computer is the center of entertainment. It has everything: photos, videos, movies, games and other useful software. But sometimes users encounter a common problem - the disk is write-protected, so the data on it cannot be edited, and new files cannot be placed. A similar thing can happen to a hard drive after a system restore. In such cases, it is useful to have an idea of how to remove write protection. At first glance, this is a very difficult task, but with detailed study, each user can do it independently.
How to remove write protection from a computer hard drive
- The work of removing write protection begins with selecting a drive that is protected (for example, drive D). You need to hover over it and click with the right mouse button. In the menu that appears, select "Properties".
- In the menu that appears, you need to select "Security". In the window that appears there are two buttons, we need the bottom one called “Advanced”.
- In the window that opens, click on the first tab called “Resolution”. In the new window, select the user account and click “Change permission”.
- In the new window, you need to click the “Change” button, after checking the “Full access” checkbox. Clicking the "Ok" button will begin the conversion process. After this, you can work with the disk in full mode. As you can see, the way to remove write protection is quite simple.
The first way to remove write protection from a flash drive
Removing write protection from a flash drive is done in a slightly different way. The first thing you should pay attention to is the design of the flash card. There should be a switch on it. It is located on one side of the flash drive, its size is very small, so users do not always pay attention to it. The switch can be in the extreme upper or extreme lower positions. In one mode, the flash drive is completely protected from data editing, in the other, it can be edited and formatted.
The second way to remove write protection from a flash drive
If switching the switch did not give positive results, then you can remove the write protection on the flash drive in another way. To do this, the flash drive needs to be connected to a computer or laptop. When you go to the “My Computer” menu, you need to right-click on the flash drive icon to display the context menu. In it you need to select the “Properties” item and left-click on it. In the window that appears, select the "Access" tab and select "Advanced settings". In the window that opens, select the “Share” option and click the “Ok” button. After these steps, the data on the flash drive can be formatted.
Possible reason for disk write protection
When choosing a method to remove write protection, the user should know that the protection may be related to computer problems, namely, incorrect operation of the disk microprocessor. To fix problems, a special program is required. A person who is poorly versed in software is unlikely to be able to restore the disk on his own. This method of removing write protection is quite complicated and requires a competent approach and knowledge of the flash card parameters.
Hello everyone friends. Today, I want to tell you about how to remove write protection from a flash drive in the shortest possible time and without much difficulty. The thing is that the other day, as usual, I wanted to copy a certain file to a flash drive, but in response I saw a message of a similar nature: “The disk is write-protected. Remove protection or use another disk." What kind of things are these? After all, such cases had never happened before and everything worked perfectly. As a result, I began to look for ways to solve this problem, which I will discuss in this article.
First, let's look at the main reasons why write protection may appear:
— The integrity of the file system was violated, for example, due to improper use of the flash drive (for example, after finishing work with the flash drive, the function of safely removing the device is not used)
— The flash drive was attacked and infected with viruses. The most common reason.
— Trivial damage to the flash drive itself. She fell somewhere or was subject to a strong blow.
— A special switch is installed on the flash drive, which prevents infection by viruses and puts write protection on the flash drive.
We have figured out the reasons, now I will tell you how to remove write protection from a flash drive using software and mechanical means.
Mechanical method of removing protection from a flash drive
As for the mechanics, everything is very simple here. Carefully inspect your flash drive for the presence of a so-called switch, which mechanically installs protection on the flash drive. Below, I have given several examples of flash drives with such a switch. If yours has such a switch, just move it to the other side and everything will work.
If the situation with the switch does not solve anything, we move on to software methods for removing protection from a flash drive.
Removing protection using the OS registry
1) In order to remove protection from a flash drive using the operating system registry, we need to click the Start button and enter regedit (command for editing the registry) in the search field. After that, right-click (right-click) on the icon that appears and select the item – Run as administrator.
2) Now we need to find a special section called – StorageDevicePolicies, which is responsible for prohibiting writing to the flash drive.
It should be located in the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
Important! If you do not find this partition at the specified path, you must create it manually. To do this, go to the parent section Control, right-click on it and select – Create – Section. Give it a name – StorageDevicePolicies.
3) Go to the StorageDevicePolicies section we created and right-click in the right area of the registry. Select the menu item - New - DWORD value (32 bits). We call it an arbitrary name, for example, WriteProtect.
4) Now we just have to make sure that the value of the WriteProtect parameter is 0. To do this, double-click on this parameter with the mouse or right-click on WriteProtect and select the menu item - Change.
Important! If the value in this parameter is set to 1, then change it to 0 and click OK.
5) Close the registry editor window, remove our flash drive from the device, and reboot it. After the reboot, insert the flash drive and check whether files can be written to it.
Removing protection from a flash drive via Diskpart
If the option of removing protection using the registry did not work, let's try this operation through the command line interface.
For this:
1) Press the Start button, enter the command diskpart, then right-click on the icon that appears and select the item – Run as administrator.
2) In the window that appears, enter the command – list disk and press the Enter key. A list of drives will appear in front of us, in which we need to determine the serial number of your flash drive.
This is easy to do using the size of your flash drive. For example, my flash drive is 8 GB in size, so I can easily identify it in the list of media. If you don’t know the size of your flash drive, then double-click on the My Computer icon (usually located on the desktop) and see what size your flash drive is (RMB - Properties).
After you have selected the desired media, enter the command select disk your media number(I have this 1). Press Enter and a message with the selected disk should appear.
3) Enter the command - attributes disk clear readonly, which clears the read-only attributes for the flash drive and removes write protection from it.
Press Enter and if everything is done correctly, the message “Disk attributes successfully cleared” will appear in front of you.
Close the diskpart utility window.
Removing protection using the Local Group Policy Editor
Sometimes there are cases where the write ban is enabled through the Group Policy Editor in the OS itself. Let's check it out:
1) Click the Start button and enter the command gpedit.msc in the search bar, then press the Enter button.
2) In the window that appears, follow the path: Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - System - Access to removable storage devices and in the right area of the window select the item - Removable drives: Deny writing.
At this point, we pay attention to the condition that appears next to the inscription. If the status is set to Enabled, then double-click on it and select Disable in the new window. Click Apply and OK.
List of programs for removing protection from a flash drive
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool– a universal program that fits almost any flash drive and allows you to quickly remove protection. program, run the exe file (this program does not require installation) which is located in the archive and the program itself will detect your flash drive. After that, you need to select the type of file system into which the program will format and click the Start button.
JetFlash Recovery Tool - this program is only suitable for flash drives from the following manufacturers: JetFlash, A-DATA and Transcend. program, carry out a simple installation, and after launching it, press the Start button.
Apacer Repair – this program only works with Apacer flash drives. If you have just such a flash drive, then in order to remove the program from the flash drive, simply launch it and follow the instructions on the screen.
AlcorMP is one of the best programs for carrying out such actions. It works with AlcorMP controllers. archive, unpack it and run the file AlcorMP.exe from the folder itself. If your flash drive works on an AlcorMP controller, then the inscription in line G will be black and this means that everything is in order and you can work. If the inscription is red, then working with this flash drive is impossible. In order to remove write protection from a flash drive, simply press the Start button (A) after setting the switch to Russian.
An important nuance. All programs for working with flash drives must be run with administrator rights. To do this, right-click on the program launch shortcut or on the program itself and from the context menu select – Run as administrator.
A couple of points. Before using the above programs, I recommend carrying out preliminary steps and if they do not help, only then resort to the help of software. What is this connected with? If you use software, all your files will be deleted as the flash drive is formatted. To prevent this from happening, use the methods below, and if they do not help, then you can already start working with the programs.
1) If your flash drive is infected with viruses (suspicious files on it), then scan it and remove all viruses found.
2) There are times when it is enough to change the USB port and the data from the flash drive can be read perfectly.
3) Be sure to check for a security switch on the flash drive. If it is in “Lock” mode, then move it to the other side.
That's all the advice that I wanted to give you on the topic of how to remove write protection from a flash drive. I hope this article will help you in solving this problem.
That's all for me. See you again!!!
Computer users work with different types of files all the time. Of course, we will not list them. We are not interested in all files, but only in certain ones that can be called problematic. There are situations when an object is protected from certain operations. In my practice, I came across information that was protected from editing (text), and less often objects that could not be deleted. Let's figure out how to remove protection from a file in various situations.
Removing protection from text documents
Blocking of this type of information can be of the following types:
- Inability to edit. In this case, the user can only read the document. He cannot change anything in the text, nor can he save the text in another format.
- Password protection. It is impossible to open such texts without an installed character set.
In the first case, there are two solutions to the problem and both of them are quite simple:
- Open a document protected from editing, select the text contained in it, copy and paste into another text file;
- If this method does not suit you, then open the blocked document in Microsoft Word. Next, open the “file menu” and click “save”. Then just click allow saving and enjoy.
It’s more difficult with documents that are password protected. Of course, this can be very useful to protect information from prying eyes. Some users password-protect texts themselves, but then conveniently forget the set code. What to do in this case?
There is only one way out. There are special programs for removing passwords from documents that have suffered such a sad fate. The most common isOfficePassword Recovery. The program is paid, but, in my opinion, information is more valuable than any money.
So, to unlock the text, we select the desired document in the “file menu”, item “open”. Next, go to the “attack” menu and press start. That's all, then all you have to do is wait for the program to find the password.
Removing protection from object deletion
There are quite a few reasons why a file is not deleted, as well as solutions to eliminate them. Let's look at them in order.
- System protection against deletion. Sometimes files are protected by the system itself. In order to solve this problem, you need to right-click on the file and select “properties”. Next, check whether the “read only” checkbox is checked. If yes, just remove it and the problem is solved.
- Blocking by third party programs. It happens that one or more programs use a specific file. Because of this, it cannot be deleted. To resolve this problem, exit all programs that may be using this process and disable your antivirus.
If that doesn't help, restart your computer in safe mode. In this case, the process of the file that needs to be deleted will be free.
- If none of the above methods helped you, you can turn to a more effective option. There are small programs that can unlock and delete objects, regardless of whether they are used by the operating system or by any application. One of the most effective programs isUnlocker. It is built into the context menu of the file manager. To delete a locked object, just select it, then select “Unlocker” through the context menu and apply the “delete” action to the object. After some time, the following message will be displayed on the screen: “Done, object deleted.”
- Such situations are rare, but still. If you remove an item from the SD card and it resists, check the drive. There is a switch on the edge of the adapter that blocks all operations with the card. Switch it to another position and repeat the removal.
- Sometimes users try to delete an item from an optical disc. Some will laugh at this, while others simply don't know that direct writing and deleting are not possible for these drives. There are special programs for these purposes.
Video instruction
We have looked at all the ways to remove protection from files. Now you know how to act in such situations.
When you try to delete some files, the operating system displays a message about the impossibility of such an operation and does not perform the desired action. Sometimes this is due to the lack of physical ability to change anything on the disk - for example, on a "finalized" or non-rewritable optical disk. In all other cases, you can try to solve this problem using software.
