Remove Write Protection from USB

Write protection is defined as the ability of a hardware device or software program to prevent new information being written, meanwhile old information being modified or changed. In simple words, when a disk is write-protected, you cannot use it normally to write data or copy data on it.

 

Generally, most of the USB based Flash/Pen-drives provide a write protection button which prevents from data being moved to or from the Pen drive. However, we can copy or paste the USB data by unlocking the write protection button.

A normal USB become write-protected because of the virus. It is somewhat difficult to remove write protection from USB.

Method 1: Change Pen Drive Read-Write Properties

• Go to My Computer/This PC and under Devices with Removable Storage, look for your pen drive device. 
• Right-click on it and click Properties. Click Edit, in the pop-up box, sometimes there's an option to Remove write-protection. Change the status of this option and try again.

Method 2: Disable Write Protection Using CMD

Windows Command Prompt is the must attempt method to remove write protection from any drive in Windows 10 and lower. If you are willing to challenge the command that seems to be a little higher-leveled, it is very likely that you can successfully remove over 90% write protection from a pen drive.

•  Search command prompt in Windows and run the program as an administrator.
• On the Windows Command Prompt, type each command line as follows and each command should be followed by an Enter key. 

diskpart

list disk

select disk #

attributes disk clear read only 

NOTE - Instead of #, you need to type the number of the disk (check the size and match the number).

•  When the write protection has been removed, you will see the message 'Disk attribute cleared successfully'. Type exit, so you can close the window.

NOTE - Do not try to format a write-protected USB flash drive before you can find a way to remove the write protection. When the pen drive is write-protected, you can neither use the native Windows disk formatting programs nor any third-party USB formatter to format it.

After removing the write protection from your pen drive, now you can feel free to format it without a hitch. EaseUS Partition Master the highly recommended free partition manager that enables users to format a USB drive to FAT32 or NTFS or EXT. 

We hope this helps. If any suggestions or doubts you can add a comment and we will reply as soon as possible.