Windows 10: Turn On or Off Write Protection for Removable Drives in Windows 10

How to: Turn On or Off Write Protection for Removable Drives in Windows 10

How to Turn On or Off Write Protection for Removable Drives in Windows 10


Warning This tutorial is no longer valid since this setting has been removed from Settings in Window 10.

You can use this instead now: Allow or Deny Write Access to Removable Drives not Protected by BitLocker in Windows


Information Starting with BitLocker".

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off let users save files to removable drives that are not protected by BitLocker in Windows 10.


Note The Let users save files to removable drives that are not protected by BitLocker setting doesn't appear to be working yet in Windows 10 build 15014 for me though. While turned off, users were still able to save files to a removable drive (USB flash drive) that wasn't protected by BitLocker.

I have reported this problem in the Feedback Hub. If you would like to upvote this issue, then click here. Thank you.

Please post a reply with your experience using this new feature below.


Here's How:

1. Open Settings, and click/tap on the Update & security icon.

2. Click/tap on Removable drives on the left side, and turn on or off (default) Let users save files to removable drives that are not protected by BitLocker on the right side for what you want. (see screenshot below)

3. When finished, you can close Settings if you like.






That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• Allow or Deny Write Access to Removable Drives not Protected by BitLocker in Windows
• How to Enable or Disable Write Protection for a Disk Drive in Windows
• How to Turn On or Off BitLocker for Removable Data Drives in Windows 10
• How to Set or Unset Read-only Attribute of Files and Folders in Windows 10

:)

 

How to Remove Write-Protection from an OEM USB Drive?

Please look at this Remove Write Protection from USB Drive in Windows 10/8/7

 

How to Remove Write-Protection from an OEM USB Drive?

I did all that. After I entered, "ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY", I didnt get a prompt stating that the write protect has been removed. But the command prompt stated that disk attributes cleared successfully.

But when I tried to format the USB drive I get a pop up window stating that its still write-protected. Do you have any other suggestions?

 

Write Protection Removal

My laptop did not wake up from sleep. The drive where Windows is installed is locked. The volume is Write-Protected. Chkdsk cannot run to fix the drive. How can the drive be not write-protected or remove the write-protection?

 

The Disk Is Write Protected - How To Remove Write Protection

Hi Fernanda,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

In regards to your concern, please help me with following questions:

• Is the Hard drive external or internal?

You can try following steps and check if that fixes the issue:

1. Run Virus scan on the Hard Drive.
2. Perform check disk commands on the Hard Disk to fix the Disk errors.

Refer to this article.

Note: Remove all the external devices before performing check disk.

Data Loss Disclaimer:

While performing these steps there might be a risk of data loss. You may take a backup of the data before performing the steps.

Hope it helps.

Let us know if you got the help you needed by clicking Yes or No.

Rohit Raina

Microsoft Community - Moderator

 

How To Format A Write Protected Flash Memory ?

¿You already tried this one?...

Run CMD


1. diskpart
2. list disk

Then in the 3º step, put the correct number of disk in the list for the usb flash (if it's listed in disk 3, then you'll have to write select disk 3).

2. select disk #
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

with that commands you will format the flash drive in fat32, if you have a large drive you can select also "format fs=ntfs" in step 7.

good luck!