How to Enable Write Protection for USB Drives in Windows

By default, users can insert a USB disk in the system and read from, or write to it without limitation. There is a policy setting that helps system administrators to restrict the ability of users to write to USB storage devices.

Disable writing to USB drives

1. Launch Regedit.exe and navigate to:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

   (If the StorageDevicePolicies key does not exist already, you need to create it.)

2. Create a new DWORD value named WriteProtect
3. Double-click WriteProtect and set its data to 1
4. Exit the Registry Editor.

The above registry edit corresponds to the following Group Policy Removable Disks: Deny write access setting located at the following branch:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Removable Storage Access

With this setting enabled, users will see the error The disk is write-protected. when trying to write to USB disks.

If the above Group Policy setting is enabled, users will see the following message when attempting to write to USB devices.

“You’ll need to provide administrator permission to copy to this folder”

Administrators can implement this setting as part of a security strategy to prevent data theft using USB devices. This setting works fine in Windows XP through Windows 10.