How to enable write protection on USB storage devices

Your data is safe on your laptops or computers? Any one who is using your laptop or desktop can copy your personal data from laptop to usb storage device. Now a days everyone have usb storage devices and it is very easy to copy files from laptop to usb devices so how can you protect your data to being copied in this post we are going to discuss on how to enable write protection on usb storage devices like usb hard disk, pen drive etc.

In many companies and organizations there laptops are USB write protected no one can copy data from laptop to USB storage you can also do this for your own laptop for your data. Microsoft windows have an option to enable write protection on usb storage devices you can do it on Microsoft windows xp, windows 7, windows 8, windows 8.1. It was tested on all windows versions given above.

How to enable write protection on USB storage

Logging to windows operating system with administrative privileges then open windows registry editor to do this open run by pressing window + r then type regedit and hit enter this command open registry editor(In this guide I am using windows 7 procedure are same for all versions for windows).

when registry editor open then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and expand it
Go to SYSTEM
Then go to CurrentControlSet
In CurrentControlSet you can find Control expand it
Right click on Control go to New then click on Key to create new key in key name type StorageDevicePolicies
After creating StorageDevicePolicies key go to StorageDevicePolicies right click on it and click on New then DWORD Value  an new Value is created on right pane rename it with WriteProtect
After creating DWORD Value with WriteProtect name change its value from 0 to 1

1 means your USB devices are write protected and 0 means you can copy your data to USB devices
Now try to copy a file or anything in to USB storage device you will get error The disk is write-protected and your file not being copy in USB device

If you want to enable Write protect change value to 1 otherwise change it to 0 you can only do it if you have admin privileges default users cannot create or change values
This is how to enable write protection on usb storage devices you can also implement it’s on your organization and if your company have ISO 27001 certification it would be very beneficial for you you can decrease you risks in risk assessments to to enable write protection on usb storage
This settings does not affect on your other usb devices like usb keyboard, usb mouse etc.
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