{"id":7936,"date":"2016-10-01T08:24:41","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T08:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/?p=7936"},"modified":"2016-10-01T08:24:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T08:24:41","slug":"enable-usb-write-protection-in-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/enable-usb-write-protection-in-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Enable USB Write Protection in Windows 10, 8 and 7"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Worry about someone copying files off your PC via USB drive? The most common solution is to disable or restrict the usage of USB ports. In this tutorial we&#8217;ll show you another way to enable write protection of all USB drives that are connected to your Windows operating system.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How to Enable USB Write Protection in Windows 10, 8 and 7?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Press the Windows key + R to open the Run box. Type <strong>regedit<\/strong> and press Enter.\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/regedit-via-run.png\" alt=\"regedit-via-run\" width=\"399\" height=\"206\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7481\" \/><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>This will open the Registry Editor. Navigate to the following key:<br \/>\n<code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control<\/code><\/li>\n<li>Right-click on the <strong>Control<\/strong> key in the left pane, select <strong>New<\/strong> -&gt; <strong>Key<\/strong>. Name it as <strong>StorageDevicePolicies<\/strong>.\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/new-registry-key.png\" alt=\"new-registry-key\" width=\"585\" height=\"382\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7939\" \/><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>Select the <strong>StorageDevicePolicies<\/strong> key in the left pane, then right-click on any empty space in the right pane and select <strong>New<\/strong> -&gt; <strong>DWORD (32-bit) Value<\/strong>. Name it <strong>WriteProtect<\/strong>.\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/new-dword-value.png\" alt=\"new-dword-value\" width=\"566\" height=\"295\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7940\" \/><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>Double-click on <strong>WriteProtect<\/strong> and then change the value data from 0 to 1.\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/usb-write-protect.png\" alt=\"usb-write-protect\" width=\"553\" height=\"223\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7941\" \/><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>The new setting takes effect immediately. Every user who tries to copy \/ move data to USB devices or format USB drive will get the error message &#8220;<em>The disk is write-protected<\/em>&#8220;. We can only open the file in the USB drive for reading, but it&#8217;s not allowed to modify and save the changes back to USB drive.\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/disk-is-write-protected.png\" alt=\"disk-is-write-protected\" width=\"352\" height=\"125\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7942\" \/>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So this is how you can enable write protection to all connected USB drives. If you want to disable write protection at a later time, just open Registry Editor and set the WriteProtect value to 0.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Worry about someone copying files off your PC via USB drive? The most common solution is to disable or restrict the usage of USB ports. In this tutorial we&#8217;ll show you another way to enable write protection of all USB drives that are connected to your Windows operating system. How to Enable USB Write Protection [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10,1894,3,39],"tags":[3001,3002],"class_list":["post-7936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-others","category-tips-tricks","category-windows-10","category-windows-7","category-windows-8","tag-enable-write-protect-usb-drive","tag-how-to-enable-usb-write-protect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7936"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7945,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions\/7945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}