Often, removable drives store important and necessary pieces of information that you always want to keep at your fingertips. Memory cards, in turn, contain a lot of pleasant music or movies. Unfortunately, it happens that these devices stop working. There are many reasons for their behavior. But the main thing is how to bring a flash card, micro sd, memory card back to life.
All the reasons why memory cards, flash drives and other removable media malfunction can be divided into five large groups:
The benefits of write protection on memory cards and micro sd
In fact, write protection is very useful thing and only thanks to it can you somehow protect your device from erasing important information. But in addition to the fact that write protection prevents changes to the files contained on the device, it effectively resists unauthorized use of the media.
The latest SecureDigital cards (SD) have new mechanisms to protect against writing and erasing files. These are both mechanical and software methods. To prevent the start of writing or erasing processes, such cards have a Lock switch on the right side of the card. In addition, the security of the contents of the micro SD card is guaranteed by 4C Entity LLC, which was the first to develop and apply the original CPRM (Content Protection for Recordable Media) encoding technique.
Such know-how partially prevents the misuse of memory cards, but also complicates the life of their owners.
Troubleshooting removable media problems
Formatting
During formatting, the process of extraordinary marking of the information storage area starts. A negative property of this procedure is that at this time all existing files from the media are irrevocably erased.
Why format a flash drive?
Reasons why you should format a flash card:
- presence of viruses;
- inability to write a large file to the media;
- combating the slow operation of the device (low data transfer speed).
Formatting can be quick and time consuming. The most popular way is to simply quick formatting when this process is started by clicking right click mouse over the flash card icon. In the appeared context menu You must select the “format” command.
5 ways to format a flash card
We offer a choice of 5 simple ways to format a flash card:
What do you need to know to unlock removable storage media?
BitLocker is mainly used to encrypt removable drives. It is important to note that it is only available for Windows 8.
Also for the Windows operating system, you can use a snail called Repair. This simple device can easily cope with unlocking a flash drive or micro SD card.
If the previous options were not successful, you can use one of the newest options - JetFlash Recovery Tool. Unfortunately, this application restores the original settings of the media, so all information from it is lost. You can download the application from the link to JetFlash Recovery Tool. Install and launch it. In the window, select the flash drive that is not working correctly and press START. The media will begin formatting. After this, it should be removed using a safe method.
Let's look at the most effective way. You can remove protection in the Windows Registry Editor. To launch the registry editor, press and hold on the keyboard Windows keys+ R, then type regedit and press Enter. Opening HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies. It is necessary to change the value in the WriteProtect data from 1 (this means write protection) to 0 (remove protection). At the end of the procedure, save the changes, turn off the flash drive and restart the computer.
Methods for preventing problems with removable media
conclusions
We have reviewed all the most popular and effective methods troubleshooting problems with removable media.
The reader can only choose the method that suits him. However, the more important information is stored on a flash drive and the more often you use it, the more careful you should be with this device. Because most of the breakdowns occur precisely due to the “human factor”.
Therefore, before taking out a flash drive, memory card or HDD from electronic device, use safe removal. This prevents many problems with removable storage media from occurring. And if flash or SD cards start to work incorrectly or are not displayed, this can always be corrected with the help of a properly selected “treatment”.
Writing files to a removable drive is the simplest operation on personal computer, which millions of users perform daily. But not all users understand the true reasons for such an error. In this article we will look at the causes of the error and how to resolve it.
Causes of the “Disk is write-protected” error. Why is the microsd card write protected?
The verbatim text of the notification looks like this: “The disk is write-protected. You need to remove the protection or use a different disk." The appearance of this message is quite logical if the operating system does not have the ability to write to the disk - for one of the reasons it is prohibited.
The causes of failures may be software or hardware. Software and hardware failures occur both in the computer OS and in the file system of the drive. But before deciding what to do, you need to understand the reasons for this phenomenon.
Basic ways to protect a flash drive (memory card) or disk from being written to
Methods for protecting information on a flash drive, as well as types of failures, can be divided into two groups: hardware and system.
One of the options for hardware protection is a mechanical switch on the drive body in the “lock” position.
System protection is a set of programs and utilities specifically designed to ensure data security. For example, the lock is set to Windows registry or blocking recording by group policy.
The easiest way to remove protection from a flash drive is Total commander
Total Commander is one of the oldest Windows managers, but is still popular among users because it has good functionality and easy to use. You can remove protection in TC using the following algorithm:
- Open "Configuration".
- Open the “File Operations” tab.
- Choose " automatic way copying."
Hardware method. Windows Command Line – Diskpart
Important: Launch command line you need to be on behalf of the administrator.
To remove protection using the command line, you need to follow the following algorithm:
- Go to the Start menu.
- Find the “Command Prompt” application (the command line can also be launched using the Win + R key combination).
- Enter Diskpart into the command and press the “Enter” key at the command line, thereby launching the disk manager application on the system.
- Enter Attributes disk clear readonly into the command and press the “Enter” key, thereby disabling the read-only mode.
- Enter Clean in the command and press the “Enter” key, thereby deleting all partitions and volumes of the disk.
- Enter Create Partition Primary in the command and press the “Enter” key, thereby creating the primary disk partition from scratch.
The ability to write to a flash drive is often blocked by numerous malicious programs that enter the computer system through other external media connected to a device or the Internet.
To find and eliminate them, you need to download an antivirus, for example Dr.Web CureIt, and scan the system for malicious code.
Mechanical protection. Switch for recording modes on a flash card
Some flash drives are equipped with special write protection mechanisms. They are located on the device body, on the outside. The device looks like a small switch.
Important: These switches are more common on SD cards, but some USB models also have them.
To activate the ability to write to a disc, just move the switch slider to the desired “OnLock” position.
Windows Tools. Setting up Group Policy (gpedit.msc)
How to remove protection installed as a result of local settings group policy? This restriction is removed using the following algorithm of actions:
- Activate Windows keys + R command prompt.
- Enter in search bar command Gredit.msc, click OK.
- In the new window, go to the tabs: Configuration>Administrative Templates>System>Access to removable storage devices.
- Go to the “Disable reading” line.
- Double-click on the line.
- In the new window, activate “Apply”>OK.
Registry editor. Removing write protection using regedit
Registry Editor - standard program, built into a modern Windows system. The application edits registry keys, sets new default settings, and restores files from backup copies.
To remove protection using the editor, you need to follow the following algorithm:
- Log in to the registry editor program by activating the Win+R keys.
- Type Redegit in the search bar and click OK.
- Find one of the registry branches called: HKey Local Machine
- Select the System branch from the drop-down list.
- From the list that drops down under this branch, select Current Control Set, then Control
- From the list of subsections, select StorageDevicePolicies
- In the program interface, check the WhiteProtect parameter
- Change the parameter value from 1 to 0.
- Close the editor and reboot the OS.
What to do if the disk is write-protected and the flash drive cannot be formatted - Low-level formatting
If the above attempts to remove protection do not bring results, then you should use the method of low-level formatting of the drive to clear and re-create all tables of the file system of the flash card. At the same time, you need to remember that in this case the recorded data will be lost, but the damaged disk memory will be restored. Full formatting will block damaged USB areas and the system will not be able to write data to them in the future.
The Low Level Format Tool program is suitable for this operation. The application clears the partition table, boot sectors, and even manufacturer data - all down to the last byte. Available on the Internet free version program, but it works slower than its paid counterpart.
Not typical causes of the “Disk is write-protected” error
The reasons why writing to a disk is blocked can be divided into common and atypical, more rare ones. The second group includes file system errors, wear or physical damage to the flash drive, microcontroller failures, and USB port malfunctions.
— Fatal errors in the file system of the flash card
If the sequence of storing and naming information in the drive's memory is violated, the structure of the file system is damaged. Logical errors occur after incorrect removal of the flash drive from the connector, memory wear, power surges and other processes. The disk is blocked, and the system reports the need to format it. To correct the situation you need:
- Try to recover data using software suitable for this media.
- Perform formatting high level with file system recovery.
Physical damage to the media is caused by manufacturing defects, cracks, overheating in motherboards and microcircuits. Physical damage is also caused by violations of operating and storage conditions, power surges, and loosening of USB connectors.
— Microcontroller failures or complete wear of the flash drive
Flash memory and the computer “communicate” with each other using a controller chip built into the external drive. The controller is controlled by a microprogram written into the chip. Sometimes, in case of unsafe removal of the flash drive or horse races electric current, arises software glitch controller. A clear sign of such a malfunction: write blocking. Also, blocking occurs due to wear of the memory chip, exceeding the threshold of rewrite cycles. The system goes into information protection mode to stop the process of memory destruction. Reflashing the microcontroller using special programs will help eliminate failures.
It is rare for a USB port to turn off spontaneously on a computer, but this error still happens. To check if the port is working properly, you must first try connecting other devices to it. If the port sees the smartphone, keyboard and other devices unstable or completely refuses to notice them, then it does not function. If the user sees a system message about the disk being write protected, it is not related to a malfunction of the USB ports. But the administrator can disable them intentionally to protect data from downloading. How to remove write protection from a flash drive if the port is disabled?
In this case, you need to enable USB using the following procedure:
- Enter the BIOS by holding down the F2 or F10 keys.
- Find values for USB Controller.
- Set the Enabled parameter for these values.
- Confirm the changes by activating the F10 key.
- Restart your PC.
How to remove protection from excel sheet
If the Excel sheet is not editable, the application toolbar is inactive, and the user does not have access to most functions. When you try to make changes, the program will display a message stating that the sheet is protected. To unlock the sheet, you will need the following steps:
- Click on the “File” item.
- Activating the “Unprotect” link in a new window.
- Enter your password. Without knowing the password, you cannot remove the protection.
IN old version In Excel, to remove the lock you need:
- Activate the “Service” item.
- Select the “Protection” tab from the list.
- Activate the “Unprotect Sheet” command.
- Enter your password.
Programs for eliminating recording errors and formatting protected flash drives
Flash drive manufacturers understand that their products may malfunction for various reasons, so every well-known brand creates utilities to eliminate them. Useful programs available on manufacturers' websites. For example, the program for Kingston is called Kingston Format Utility, Transcend is called JetFlash Recovery. The programs are freely available on the manufacturers' websites.
The main purpose of USB disk and SD card protection is to add a write protection switch to USB flash drive and SD card to prevent accidental deletion of files and avoid suspicious files like malware/trojan etc. from not permitted sources for storing data on a USB drive. If the USB drive is in read-only mode, any attempt to create (or) edit a file on the USB drive will be denied, but if you really want to make changes to the USB drive to add some additional information(or) changes to information that is already present on it, restrictions that you added to your computer initially will now prevent you from making changes such as adding new files or deleting existing files from any USB drive connected to it. But, you can still read the files available on it, but you will not be allowed to make changes or format the drive.
How to remove write protection to format a USB flash drive and memory card
Initially, this kind of logic was applied to protect your valuable information on a USB drive from someone who can handle your device but cannot access it. It can steal your device, but it won't be able to make changes to trick you into believing that you edited the files on the drive. For example: in a business environment, an anonymous person who is trying to change the price bid amount quotes a project with the intention of eliminating the company from competition among several other companies that were trying to purchase the project.
But in USB drives and SD cards, this logic is used to block unauthorized content, store and make changes to the content present on it, making the information read-only. Consequently, any USB drive or SD card connected to your computer is now write-protected, so even if the computer is affected by harmful viruses such as Trojans, malware etc. will never affect the USB drive connected to it.
There are several ways to format write-protected USB flash drive and SD card, and here in this article we would like to go into a little more detail, which works for most of the available devices, in an effective and simple way.
1. Using the Diskpart program - command line command
2. Using the registry RegEdit.exe
1. Disable write protection of the flash drive using the command line utility - the Diskpart command
This is another easy way to disable write protection from disk, USB storage such as flash drives and memory cards using the command line using a program called diskpart.
Note: To disable write protection using this method, you can run the command prompt window as an administrator, otherwise access will be denied.
Warning: during this process, some USB drives will be hidden after the clean process is started. After removing write protection on the device, to reuse The USB drive must be formatted, so we strongly recommend creating backup copy USB disk files before moving on to the next section.
1. Connect the USB drive to the computer and run the command prompt as an administrator (to open the command prompt, enter cmd.exe in the Start menu search box and right-click and select run as administrator)
2. In the Command Prompt window, type the following commands and press Enter after each command.
diskpart [press Enter] list disk [press Enter]
3. All drives including external and internal drives will be listed, look for the USB drive with the storage capacity it contains, usually USB drives have less capacity so it will be in MB.
4. To select a drive from the list, enter the command “ select disk 1” and press Enter, you will receive the message “Disk 1 is the selected disk”.
5. Now enter the type “ attributes disk clear readonly” and press Enter, immediately after the entered command, the message “disk attributes are cleared successfully”.
6. Now all attributes that are added to the disk, such as read/write, will be completely removed.
7. From here you can either stop and close the command prompt and execute the format USB drive manually in Windows Explorer(or) continue the format directly on the command line with the following command and specify the format type.
Note: formatting via the command line is a slow process since the write protection is removed, so we recommend that you stop and close the command line and open Windows Explorer and try to format the USB drive and drives in “My Computer” (Windows Explorer) using right click->Format.
8. To format a USB drive directly from the command line, follow steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 above then continue by entering the commands below.
clean[press Enter] create partition primary[press Enter]
format fs=ntfs(If the USB drive has a capacity of less than 4 GB, we recommend that you replace NTFS with either file system FAT or FAT32)
9. EXIT when everything is ready, now your device is not write protected and is ready for use.
10. To get more detailed information by the above method, see below picture and details team team cmd in order.
Note: After formatting via the command line utility, if the USB drive does not appear in My Computer, simply change the drive letter in Disk Management.
2. Remove write protection from a flash drive using the RegEdit.exe registry service
We will list how and in what order it is recommended to use the method without using any third-party tools to remove write protection from a USB drive. So, please follow the below mentioned steps to do this using the recommended process.
1. Enter Run execute and enter the regedit command to launch the regedit.exe editor utility
2. Once you have entered the regedit command the editor opens, proceed to the next section.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SYSTEM->CURRENTCONTROLSET->CONTROL->STORAGEDEVICEPOLICIES
3. Now look for the write-protected value on the right side of the window, then double-click on it and change the value from 1 to 0.
Note: if you didn't find something like STORAGEDEVICEPOLICIES in the above navigation, create new parameter, right click on control- control->New->Key and name the key as StorageDevicePolicies.
4. Now right click on the created folder StorageDevicePolicies->New->DWORD (32 bit) value and name it like “ WriteProtect” and set its value to 0. Click OK and save the changes.
Changing the DWORD(32-bit) value from 0 to 1 will enable write protection on the USB flash drive, and changing the value from 1 to 0 will disable write protection and allow you to make changes to the drive.
5. Then close the regedit.exe editor and restart your computer.
When writing a file to a memory card, you may encounter a write protection problem. The user sees the message “The disk is write protected” on the screen.
Let's figure out how to solve the problem.
Switch
Many SD cards have a special switch that removes protection. If you are using microSD card, the switch will be on the adapter.
Move it up or down to remove the protection. If there is no switch on the map, use the following tips.
Virus check
A universal method for all occasions. Scan your memory card for viruses. Use the built-in Windows Defender 10 or any other.
Right-click on the memory card in Explorer and select the desired item. We have a standard Defender, so we will check the card with using Windows Defender.
Registry
We go to the registry editor: the key combination Win + R and the command regedit. you will read more. how to enter the editor in different ways.
In the editor, follow the path indicated in the screenshot. In the Control section we are interested in the StorageDevicePolicies folder. If you don’t find it there, create it: right-click on the section Control – New – Section.
In StorageDevicePolicies, right-click on the empty space and create a DWORD value. Choose 32 or 64 bits depending on the bit size of your system.
Double-click on the created parameter with the left mouse button and set the value to 0. Click OK, close the editor and restart the computer.
Diskpart
Let's try to unlock the memory card using the Diskpart utility. To do this, launch the command line as administrator. How to do this - read.
On the command line you need to enter several commands one by one:
- diskpart
- list disk
- select disk N
- disk clear readonly
At the stage listdisk you need to remember the number under which the memory card is displayed. At the disk selection stage ( selectdisk) you need to write a number instead of the letter N.
Team diskclearreadonly will allow us to remove the “read-only” attribute from the memory card and unlock it.
Group Policy Editor
Another option to remove write protection is to configure Group Policy settings. We go into the editor using one of the methods described.
In the “Computer Configuration” section, open the “Administrative Templates” tab, go to the “System” section and then to the “Access to removable storage devices” folder.
We find in the list the option “Removable drives: prohibit reading”.
Double-click on the parameter with the left mouse button. Set the value to “Disabled”.
We do the same with the “...prohibit recording” parameter.
Formatting a memory card
To format the card, it is better to use third party programs rather than the built-in Windows tools. Use one of the programs - HP Disk Format Tool, HDD Low Level Format, SD Memory Card Formatter and others.
The latter can be downloaded from the official website (https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/). You are taking operating system and agree to the terms of use of the utility.
After starting the program, select the card in the window (Select card) and set the formatting mode to Overwrite format.
Let's sum it up
One of the ways to remove protection from a card record should be working. Try everything one by one. Although it happens that none of the advice helps. Perhaps the problem is in the memory card itself - it is old, out of order and can no longer work adequately.
Any storage device, be it SD cards, microSD or USB flash drives are subject to such an error as the inability to work with saved files, or rather notification "Storage is write protected". The question of how to remove this protection on a phone or computer is becoming relevant among thousands of users. Next, you will be presented with easy and more complex solution options, but basically everyone can figure them out.
Removing recording protection on your phone and memory card
Below we will present all the current methods and solutions that you can apply on your device. Choose the easiest one for yourself and act.
SD cards and microSD
The solution with microSD will mean Android phones (Samsung, Nokia, Xiaomi, etc.), so feel free to apply the described unlocking methods to your smartphone.
If the "Storage is write-protected" notification appears when deleting through the Gallery, try opening folder from the photo and remove files from there. Majority file managers also solve this issue. For example, Total Commander will present a dialog to remove protection.
Here Video instruction with clear explanations on formatting memory via the command line.
USB flash drives
Although the described steps can still be applied to any memory cards, it is still better to relate them more to a USB flash drive.
- Some manufacturers have decided to personally address the issue of simply removing protection from a flash drive. All this resulted in the creation of utilities for unlocking data. Most of them restore functionality through formatting. An example can be given Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool, but there are other programs. There is nothing complicated about them; any user can understand them.
- Another option is to try your luck through "Local Group Policy Editor". Enter the command gpedit.msc in the menu called up using WIN+R. A multi-step editor will open. The first point will be "Computer Configuration". Click on the triangle next to it. Come up with the following options. Select the system and then "Accessing removable storage devices". In the right window we find “Removable drives: Deny reading”. It should be “Not set”, if not, then enable this combination by clicking on the parameter.
Conclusion
After all, the "Storage is write-protected" notification may indicate a technical failure of the media, which indicates its replacement. You can check memory performance in service center However, you should make sure that you cannot remove the protection using the methods described above.
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