How to Disable/Enable Writing Access to USB drives

To disable writing access to USB drives and make all USB drives only read-only access, follow these steps:

1. Run Registry Editor (regedit).
2. Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
3. Create a New Key named as StorageDevicePolicies.
4. Highlight StorageDevicePolicies, and then create a New DWORD (32-bit) Value named as WriteProtect.
5. Double click on WriteProtect, and set its value data to 1.

Once set, all users on the computer is now blocked and prevented from copying, transferring or writing any files, documents and data to the USB disk drives, without the need to restart or reboot computer. Any attempt to download or copy files to USB drive will return the following error message:

The disk is write protected.
The media is write-protected.
Remove the write protection or use another disk.

How to Enable Writing Access

1. Run Registry Editor (regedit).
2. Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
3. Create a New Key named as StorageDevicePolicies.
4. Highlight StorageDevicePolicies, and then create a New DWORD (32-bit) Value named as WriteProtect.
5. Double click on WriteProtect, and set its value data to 0