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.
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.
5. Double-click on WriteProtect and set the Value data to 1.
Now
the right-protection for USB drives is enabled on your computer (no
restart required) and thus it would not be possible for anyone or any
program to add/delete the contents from your USB flash drive. Any
attempt to copy or download the files onto the USB drive will result in
the following error message being displayed.
To revert and remove the write-protection, all you need to do is just change the Value data for WriteProtect (Step-5) from 1 back to 0. Now write access to all the USB devices is re-enabled.
Sometimes
it may seem difficult to remember and follow the above mentioned steps
each time you want to enable/disable the write protection. Hence as an
alternative way, there are many tools available to automatically
enable/disable the write-protection feature. One of my favorite tool is
USB Write Protect by Naresh Manadhar. Using this tool you can limit write access to your USB drives with just a click of a button.
You can download this tool from the following link:
