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For some reason I cannot add nor remove any files in my USB drive, and Windows says that it is write protected (I have no idea how write protect got enabled on the drive in the first place)

I can read and copy files from the USB drive just fine, but cannot write anything to it

I have seen this, and it says to go to StorageDevicePolicies, but it doesn't exist in my computer

All other USB drives work fine on this computer

Why did it suddenly get write protected, and how can I undo this? Can this be done without messing with the registry or formatting the drive? I don't want to format the drive

OS is Windows 7

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  • Do you have AV or any Security Suite installed?
    – bjoster
    Mar 31, 2017 at 11:12
  • @bjoster yes I have anitivirus but I don't think it's causing this issue
    – user13267
    Mar 31, 2017 at 11:54
  • Try uninstalling. 7 out of 10 'write protect' effects are caused by AV and/or security stuff.
    – bjoster
    Apr 3, 2017 at 12:18

1 Answer 1

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There's a big chance that if it gets write protected out of nowhere that it's dead, usually when flash memory has been overwritten more times than it can handle (which can sometimes be way too fast) then it just becomes read-only, happened to me several times, have only been able to restore it once.
If you feel you've tried everything, it's probably this

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  • Actually I haven't tried anything yet, hence I'm asking
    – user13267
    Mar 31, 2017 at 11:53
  • The only thing I tried was the registry thing I linked to in the question, but the registry entry mentioned in that website doesn't exist in my computer
    – user13267
    Mar 31, 2017 at 11:54
  • how did you restore it by the way? Is it possible to do it without formatting the drive?
    – user13267
    Mar 31, 2017 at 11:57
  • That would be pretty difficult, unless by any chance you have the write protected switch on? But I think that if it had a switch like that you would've tried it already.. You can also open cmd as admin, then type "diskpart" and press enter, then type "list disk" press enter, and choose the disk that is your usb drive, if that would be disk 2 for example, type "select disk 2" press enter, then with your usb drive selected, type this "attributes disk clear readonly" press enter, if that will say success, but it didn't actually work, your usb flash drive is basically dead, if it does work, good..
    – Agterbosch
    Apr 4, 2017 at 11:19

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