Make Pen Drive Write Protected

Trouble:

One reader mailed us asking how can he make his portable USB drive write protected so no data can be deleted or added on the pen drive, this is what he said in his mail

I want to make my drive write protected on every computer where I connect my drive

Portable drives or cards can be write protected by two ways either by physical lock provided on some of the pen drives, but locking the drive with physical lock is not a good way as any one can move the physical lock and make your drive writable.

Make Drive Write Protected With Physical Lock

Second method to make the drive write protected involves a registry hack which actually is computer dependent not the drive as it deals with registry.

Note: With this registry hack you will actually make all the removable drives connected to your computer write protected, as this registry hack instructs windows to make any removable storage device write protected.

Write Protect Instructions

Download writeprotect.bat in a zip package from here and extract the files on pen drive and double click writeprotect.bat to make your drive write protected. You will need to eject your pen drive once after launching the batch file to make your drive write protected on the computer.

Disable Write Protect Instructions

Download disablewriteprotect.bat in a zip package from here (this package is same as bove, download any of these two) and extract the files on the pen drive and double click disablewriteprotect.bat to disable write protection on your pen drive. You will need to eject your pen drive once after launching the batch file to disable write protection.

Note: I have tested these batch files on Windows XP and it should also work on windows vista too.

Author + Admin: Rohit Khurana
Software Engineer by profession. I am a part time tech blogger and believe in blogging because I enjoy writing on technology. I also write about Cars and Bikes at www.carblogindia.com. You can catch me on twitter @rohit_khurana. Get in touch with me at RohitKhurana.in.