I have a SanDisk flash drive that has been working perfectly until recently when it started displaying a message that it is write protected whenever I want to copy anything. This flash does not have a side button to remove write protection and that leaves me wondering how to go about it. Does anyone know of a software or any method I can use? Will I lose my data with this method?
I know the write protection security that prevents you from using your USB flash drive only works if you want to copy or transfer files from your computer going to your USB flash drive. It totally restricts you from writing anything into the device. But I don’t think the write protection security will also prevent you from copying the contents of the USB flash drive to your computer hard drive.
Try transferring all the contents of your USB flash drive into a folder in your hard drive and then format your USB flash drive. See if the write protection issue will also prevent the device from getting formatted. If you also cannot format the flash drive, try this. Click Start, Run, and then type without quotes “regedit” then hit Enter.
Expand “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControl”. Under Control, check if there is a key named Storage Device Policies. If there is, select Storage Device Policies, double-click “write protect” then change the value to zero [0] and then click OK. Close the registry editor then try your flash drive again. On the other hand, if you didn’t find the Storage Device Policies key under Control, you need to create it.
To create the key, right-click Control, point to New, and then select Key. Type without quotes “Storage Device Policies” then hit Enter. See image.
After that, right-click Storage Device Policies, point to New, and then select DWORD Value. Type without quotes “write protect” then hit Enter. Double-click “write protect” then verify that the value is zero [0] then click OK. Close the registry editor then try your flash drive again. See image.
