How to Write-Protect USB Flash Drive

Many a time, it becomes necessary for us to write  protect our USB flash drive so as to protect it from viruses and other malware programs. Because flash drives are so popular and most widely used to move data between computers, they are the prime target for attackers as a means to get infections spread around the computer world. Also, since USB drive is not a Read-Only Memory (ROM), the data inside it can easily be modified or deleted by malware programs.

But unfortunately, most of the new flash drives do not come with a write-protect feature as the manufacturers wish to cut down the cost of production. Hence, the only way to write-protect your USB flash drives is to enable this feature on your own computer.

This can be done by adding a small entry to the Windows registry which acts as a switch that can be enabled to make use of the write protection or disabled to allow write access. Just follow these

steps:

1. Open the Registry Editor (Open the “Run” dialog box, type regedit and hit “Enter”).

2. Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\

3. Create a New Key named as StorageDevicePolicies.
To do this right-click on Control, and click on New->Key and name it as StorageDevicePolicies.

4. Now right-click on  StorageDevicePolicies and create a New->DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it as WriteProtect.