The flash drive is not formatted and the disk is protected. The flash drive is write protected, what to do and how to format it

It happens that the storage medium “does not allow itself to be formatted,” and the system reports that it is write-protected, although the card or flash drive does not have a corresponding switch at all (or the protection is disabled). You can read data stored on the media, but you will not be able to delete it in any way. In other cases, the system supposedly deletes files without problems, but, in fact, they do not disappear.

Below are two methods that should help you unlock protected media and format it. Keep in mind, however, that they may not produce the expected results.

When damaged media any attempts at formatting may not be effective. Then all that remains is to purchase a new medium and copy all the resources to it.

Secure media - unlocking via registry

If within the section Control there is no "StorageDevicePolicies" subkey, create one by right-clicking and selecting Create → Chapter. Make sure you enter the name correctly. Select the created partition with the right mouse button, select Create → DWORD parameter. Name the new value WriteProtect and assign it the number 0 in the field Data values. Confirm with OK, close Registry Editor and reboot the system.

If the described method does not work, try the following tip.

Removing a lock with Diskpart

Connect the USB drive to the USB connector, then call the console. Enter for this cmd.exe In the Start menu search box, right-click the item found and select Run as administrator. Administrator rights will allow you to avoid the message Access denied.

Then enter the following commands in sequence, confirming each by pressing the Enter key.

diskpart

list disk

select disk x(x – means the drive number assigned to the used USB memory- determine this number based on the capacity of the media included in the list)

attributes disk clear readonly

create partition primary

format fs=fat32(you can use the option ntfs instead of fat32 if you intend to use the media only on Windows computers)

A flash drive is a universal and very convenient means of storing information. However, questions may arise when working with it. Surely many users have encountered the fact that it is not possible to write anything to a flash drive, since it is protected. So, from this article you will learn how to format a flash drive if it is write-protected.

But before you take any serious action, make sure that the problem is write protection. It is also possible that the computer refuses to write information to the media due to damage to the USB port or the flash drive itself. In addition, there are external drives, which have a special write-protect switch on the case. It’s also worth checking, just in case, whether there are any viruses on the media. If this is not the case, there are several ways to remove write protection.

One of the simplest and most frequently used methods. To work with diskpart, you do not need to download any third-party programs; it is already installed on computers with operating system Windows XP and later. Procedure:

1. Open the command line as administrator;
2. Enter “diskpart”;
3. Enter “list disk”;
4. We are shown a list of connected media (which are displayed as Disk 0, Disk 1, etc.). With its help, we determine the number of the Disk we need. It is very important not to confuse the numbers, as you risk losing all data from other media, for example, hard drive. To eliminate the error, you need to know exactly the size of the memory on the flash drive.
5. Enter “attributes disk clear readonly”. If the operation is successful, a disk cleanup message appears. Those who want to simply remove write protection and not format the data right away should stop at this stage;
6. For complete cleaning flash drives, enter “clean”;
7. Enter “create partition primary” «;
8. To format in FAT32, enter the command “format fs=fat32”, for NTFS - “format fs=ntfs”;
9. We exit the utility using the “exit” command.

Accessing the Windows Local Group Policy Editor

To launch it, press the Win and R keys simultaneously and enter “gpedit.msc” in the window that appears. Open the branch: Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Access to Removable Storage Devices. Here at the top there is a point “ Removable drives: disable writing/reading." Check the box next to “Disable”. Now you can try formatting the media again. If the “Disable” option was already there, it means that the problem is not in system limitations, but in the flash drive itself, and you need to try another method.

Checking the Windows registry

Sometimes formatting restrictions may be due to incorrect settings registry To make sure of this, open the command line as an administrator and type “regedit”. The Registry Editor window opens. Select the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder, from there we go down to System and then to CurrentControlSet, there we click on Services and then on USBSTOR. Several parameters will be displayed to us at once, but we are only interested in Start. Its value (indicated in parentheses after the code) should be 3. If there is any other number there, then you need to correct it. To do this, right-click on the parameter, select the function change and in the panel that opens, type 3 (the selected number system does not matter). If the registry value was initially correct, then you will have to try to remove the protection from the flash drive using another method.

You can also try another way to solve the problem without leaving the registry. Using the path already described above, we get to the CurrentControlSet folder, but from there we go to the Control folder. It should have a StorageDevicePolicies section. Here we are interested in the WriteProtect parameter. Its value must be 0 in hexadecimal. If the parameter is specified incorrectly, we forward it. If the value is correct initially, feel free to exit the registry and try to remove the protection in a different way.

Using the diskmgmt.msc utility

This utility is already installed on the system. Open the command line and enter “diskmgmt.msc”. We find the Disk that we want to format. Right-click on it and click on “Delete Volume” and confirm. Now in context menu Find the “Create volume” option and select “primary partition”. We leave all the settings in it as default.

Using Apacer USB3.0 Repair Tool

This is a fairly effective and extremely simple application, which, however, will have to be downloaded from the Internet. There are only two functions in the application menu: Format and Restore. The first function will completely delete all data from the flash drive, and the second will return the factory settings (that is, it will remove write protection).

Access to the manufacturer's website

Some large manufacturers They create websites for their customers where they can get free advice or even replace faulty media. You can also find them special software for formatting.

Sometimes when working with various flash drives, a problem arises related to the inability to format them or even make any changes to them (write/delete files, etc.). In this article we will look at several ways to bypass this type of blocking.

1. Windows through the corresponding function in the drive properties.
2. If even after this formatting fails or there is simply no such switch on the flash drive, let’s try another formatting method - through the command line. Opening it through the menu “Start” – “Search” – cmd (in Windows 7), “Start” – “Run...” – cmd (in Windows XP) or Win+X (in Windows 8), enter the following commands one by one, confirming performing each of them by pressing the Enter key:
3. diskpart;
4. list disk;
5. select disk X (where X is the number corresponding to the desired flash drive in the list that appears after executing the previous command);
6. attributes disk clear readonly;
7. clean; create partition primary; format fs=fat32 (for formatting in
8. file system

group policy " In the explorer on the left, follow the path “Computer Configuration” – “Administrative Templates” – “System” – “Access to Removable Storage Devices”. The value of the “Removable drives: Deny write” property should not be “Enabled”. Otherwise, change it to “Disabled” or “Not specified” and try to format the flash drive again. We also check the value of this parameter using a similar path in the “User Configuration” section., which automatically perform actions from points 3 and 4. An example of the operation of one of them and instructions for its operation are presented in the video below. If none of these methods help format the flash drive to different computers, then most likely the problem is a technical malfunction of the drive itself.

I think many of you have encountered the fact that The flash drive is write protected and it is also impossible to format it. In this article we will look at a way to solve this problem.

A USB flash drive with 32 gigabytes of space just sits on your office desk, ironically taking up space. Why? Because you can't write anything to it. The flash drive is write protected, and you can't format it! Or can you still do it? Many people ask us how to format secure files. USB recording flash drives.

First, make sure this is what you need to do. Maybe you're just broke USB port? Or is the flash drive itself damaged? Well, or uninstalled drivers for the host controller?

So let's get started. Can you remove write protection? Let's assume you've followed all the instructions in our article on fixing write errors on a USB flash drive. Then there was one more method left, accidentally missed in that publication.

Removing write protection using the Diskpart command at the command line

Click the button Start" and type cmd into the search bar. In chapter " Programs" one result should appear. Right-click on it and select " ».

A command line should appear on your screen that looks something like this:

Enter the command DISKPART and press Enter. Diskpart is a disk partitioning tool built into Windows. It can be accessed via the command line. Using it we can change the settings associated with your USB drive.

Now enter LIST DISK and press Enter again. You will see a table similar to the one shown in the screenshot below. It shows that there are two disks available: HDD(HDD) called Disk 0 and a USB flash drive called Disk 1. We know that the flash drive is Disk 1, since it is much smaller than Disk 0 (7441 MB versus 298 GB). From now on, be extremely careful. If you start working with the wrong disk, you will quickly create unnecessary problems for yourself.

Next enter SELECT DISK 1 and press Enter. The screen will display a message that Disk 1 is now selected. Enter ATTRIBUTES DISK, and Diskpart will tell you everything you need to know about your flash drive. We are interested in the first line " Current read-only status: Yes" Now we know for sure that the disk is write protected.

To remove write protection using Diskpart, enter the command. If it works, you will see a message indicating that the disk attributes were successfully cleared.

Double-check this by trying to copy a small file to a USB drive. If it works, great! If you still receive an error, it's time to use specialized utilities.

Testing disk formatting methods

The test environment for these utilities will be a computer running a Kingston DataTraveler DT101 G2 8GB USB 2.0 flash drive. memory.

Before each test, we place a file on the disk and write-protect the drive using the Diskpart tool. We then disconnect the flash drive from the computer and reconnect it so that the system reads the new attributes. Skipping this step in some cases resulted in Windows Explorer I didn't see the flash drive.

We then check the attributes of the flash drive using Diskpart and try to copy another file to it. If the copy fails, it is safe to assume that the write protection is working.

After this, we format the disk using one of the utilities. If the operation is successful, we check whether our file remains on the flash drive. If it disappears, then the application actually managed to format the USB drive.

To understand if it has disappeared write protection After formatting, we again try to copy the file to the flash drive. If copying is completed successfully, the write protection has been removed. If not, we check the attributes USB disk via Diskpart to see if the computer has access to the disk and if protection is active.

We will only talk about utilities that successfully completed their task applicable to the tested flash drive. Other programs can also help you, especially if they are developed by the manufacturer of your USB drive. If such a utility does not work for you, go to the store where you purchased the flash drive, or contact the manufacturer. Your drive must be replaced or repaired.

USB formatting utilities

Apacer USB 3.0 Repair tool has two functions: format and repair. No frills.

As you might have guessed, formatting will delete all data from the USB drive, and restoring it will make it work again. The recovery function performs low-level formatting. This completely wipes the flash drive and returns it to factory settings.

Formatting worked on the test disk, however write protection remained untouched. Recovery also successfully cleaned the flash drive and renamed it to PUBLIC, but did nothing with the protection.

If none of these functions work on your Apacer USB drive, you will have to follow the recommendation on the Apacer official website which suggests contacting the authorized dealer or distributor from whom you purchased the product to obtain a replacement if the flash drive is beyond repair.

Immediately after launch, the program identified the disk and its current file system.

Formatting went very quickly, but the drive’s protection again remained intact. Like the Apacer utility, the program changed the name of the USB drive, but not to Public, but to Kingston. We were not surprised by this result. After all, the test disc is a Kingston product.

Results

Only these programs were able to successfully format the tested flash drive. It is quite possible that they will help you too. However, the apps failed to remove write protection, which was our ultimate goal.

As mentioned earlier, search special applications on the official website of the manufacturer of your device. Or find out if the drive can be replaced or repaired. If all this does not help, the only thing you can do is go to the nearest store and buy a new flash drive.

If you have discovered another way to format a write-protected USB flash drive and remove the protection, please share it in the comments.

The problem with formatting flash drives is not always related to their malfunction; sometimes an error can occur due to write protection. And while some removable media have the appropriate switches to allow data to be written to the device, others do not. Be that as it may, from this article you will learn how to format a flash drive if it is write-protected. Even taking into account the fact that there are no switches in sight and the flash drive is write-protected.

Removing write protection using the command line

If for some reason you did not see the long-awaited message with the formatting results, do not despair. It is possible that the flash drive was protected in a different way - we recommend that you try using the following methods for removing write protection.

Local Group Policy Editor, as a way to remove protection from logging and formatting a flash drive