Format a Write-Protected USB Flash Drive or Memory Card

Most of the USB pen drives and memory cards have switches for write protection, which prevents the deletion of new files and also doesn’t allow you to copy new files on to it and also prevents the drive from being formatted.

Formatting a USB drive that has been write-protected

Most often when you try to format any memory card windows tells that it is write-protected even though there is no switch present on the card.

Here are a few methods that can be applied for formatting the card and removing the write-protection. Keep mind that this will not assure that it will work for you: your drive or memory card can be broken or even be corrupt and no low-level formatting tool or utility will make it work again. The only solution present in this case is to buy a new one.

Removing write-protection in the Registry using Regedit.exe

In Windows XP and later versions that has the registry editor which can be run through typing regedit through the run command present in your start menu.

Once you have opened regedit it will appear as shown in the figure below.

Search and navigate to the following key:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\

CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

Now Double-click on the WriteProtect value present in the right-hand pannel of Regedit.exe. Now here change the Value data from 1 to 0 the default value is 1 and then click on OK which will save the change. Now close the Regedit and reboot your computer. Plugin your USB drive, and you will find that it is no longer write-protected. You can now format it by right clicking on the device and then format which will format the drive.

If you are unable to find the StorageDevicePolicies, you can create a new key by right-clicking in the white space present in the Control folder and choosing New -> Key and carefully entering the name  as show in the figure below.

Double-click on the new key and right-click on it again and select New -> DWORD and name it WriteProtect and set the value to 0. Click on OK, exit Regedit and reboot your computer.

If the above method does not work try the following:

Removing write-protection using Diskpart

With the USB drive plugged in into the USB port, launch the command prompt by using the command cmd in run that is present in your start menu of Windows XP or search for cmd in start menu in Windows 8.

NOTE: If it is Windows 8 you need to run cmd in administrator mode.

To do this, right-click on the shortcut present and then select Run as administrator.

Now, type in the following command by pressing Enter after each command:

diskpart

list disk

select disk x (where x is the number of your USB flash drive – use the capacity to work out which one it is)

attributes disk clear readonly

clean

create partition primary

format fs=fat32  (you can swap fat32 for ntfs if you only need to use the drive with Windows computers)

exit