Nowadays USB drives, SD cards, pen drives or thumb drives are
widely used by more and more persons as data storage devices. Usually, you use
such a removable device to store some important files so as to carry it
anywhere for usage. However, when copying a file or folder to a USB drive, pen
drive, SD card or any removable disk, an error message happens to you, saying “The
disk is write-protected. Remove this write-protection or use another disk”.
If you click “Try Again” button, this
issue still appears.
In this case, perhaps you think there is something wrong with
this target device. As a matter of fact, it is in healthy status but only be
write-protected which can’t allow you to write data to or change the data on
the USB drive. Once opening USB write protection, you can only read data from
the device, not doing any operation to it. Therefore, you get the disk write
protected error when transferring a file or folder to your USB drive or SD
card.
Why Write Protected USB Occur
Usually while encountering disk wrote protected issue during
using Windows 10/8/7, you are wondering about the specific factors. Generally
speaking, there are six related reasons. Keep reading now.
·
Virus
attack: various viruses are ubiquitous which are most likely to attack your USB
flash drive, pen drive or SD card. Then the device is in write-protected.
·
Read Only
Switch: usually, there is a switch on your USB drive and it is set as “read-only”,
then the disk is write protected Windows 10/8/7 issue exists.
·
File
Read Only: you probably have set the file as “read-only”, and then you are not
allowed to copy it to a USB drive or other devices.
In addition, full disk, security setting, and corrupted
device are still related to USB write protected error. After learning the reasons,
it is time to fix disk write protection error. Do you know how to do this work?
Here are some solutions according to different reasons.
How to Remove USB Write Protection
Solution 1: Check USB Flash Drive
for Virus
Virus infection is a very common cause of the disk is write
protected SD card/USB drive issue. When plugging your device to the computer,
viruses come to this device and then the disk is write-protected. In this case,
please download a piece of anti-virus software and then set it to automatically
check your device and kill viruses after connecting it to your computer.
Solution 2: Unlock USB Write
Protection
As the above content mentioned, usually there is a physical
switch which is used to lock or unlock your device. If you lock it, disk write
protection issue appears during copying files or folders to the device. Please
check whether this switch is locked. If it is, unlock it now.
On the other hand, if your USB drive doesn’t have such a
switch, but write protection error still exists in Windows 10/8/7, please turn
to the next solution for help.
Solution 3: Ensure USB Drive Isn’t
Full
In addition, full disk is also the main factor of disk write
protected error. In order to remove USB write protection, please right click your
USB drive or SD card partition to select “Properties”
in Windows Explorer. Then you will see the free disk space. If the disk space
is enough, but you still fail to copy files or folders with the disk is write
protected issue, try the next way.
Solution 4: Change File Status
When a file is set as “Read-only”
status, it is likely that there is a failure to copy it to the USB drive. In order
to disable write protection, please check the target file status and modify it
not in “Read-only” state.
Solution 5: Use Diskpart to Clear
Write Protected USB
Besides, there is another way to disable the disk is write
protected, which is to use diskpart. Please run CMD as administrator and then
type “diskpart”. Then type the
following commands in turn:
"list disk"
"select disk n"
"disk attribute clear readonly"
Solution 6: Modify the Registry
Please open registry edit, and then go to find "WriteProtect"
by the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
Then change the value from “1” to “0”.
Solution 7: Format USB Drive
If all the above ways can’t solve your disk write protection
issue, the device probably is corrupted or broken. In this case, you need to
format it. How to format the target drive? Usually, you choose Windows Disk
Management to finish disk formatting. However, this free tool can only help to
format the partition which is smaller than 32GB to FAT32. In addition, you
probably fail to format write-protected USB drive, pen drive or SD card. In
this case, write protected USB format tool – MiniTool Partition Wizard Free
Edition is a good choice. It can be used to format the partition with only three
steps in Windows 10/8/7.
Step 1: Launch this professional partition manager, and then
in the main interface, select the target removable disk and then click “Format Partition” feature.
Step 1: Launch this professional partition manager, and then
in the main interface, select the target removable disk and then click “Format Partition” feature.
Step 2: Then choose FAT32 as the file system. Click “OK” to go back to the main interface.
Step 3: Click “Apply”
button to execute this operation to disable USB write protected issue.
Now with the write protection removal software, disk write
protection issue is solved. If you want to learn much information about this
error message, please refer to this post Get "The Disk Is Write Protected" Error during FileCopy? Try These Ways.
