Usb write protected virus

I'm going to second Huw's assessment that the drive itself is set to read-only, and that's what is preventing you from formatting it.

I'm unclear what the goal is. If you have a piece of electronics that came infected, can you have any faith at all that there's a way to remove the infection with software? What if the payload is stored on a ROM? I cant format my usb, it was used by one of officers laptop. I am facing a similar problem. This is a generic flash disk 8GB. Since the past week it is reporting some virus couldnt get the name as the AV hung while trying to remove it and the disk is marked as RO.

I tried low level hdd fromatting without any success. I experienced the same problem b4, when my 8gb transcend usb drive was infected by write protected virus, I believe that no one can fix this issue, even a software expert , i search a lot of articles on the internet , already read alot about how to fix, i follow the instructions, but no one is help,,, nothing.

To continue this discussion, please ask a new question. Get answers from your peers along with millions of IT pros who visit Spiceworks. Any Help. Best Answer. Click OK to continue. At your PC's desktop, type cmd to the search box and right-click it to choose Run as administrator to open Command Prompt. In the new window, type the following bolded commands one by one and each one should be ended by pressing the Enter key:. Then choose a file system from the list and check the Quick Format option.

In this case, please ask the third-party write protection removal software - MiniTool Partition Wizard for help; it can quickly perform formatting without any limit to fix the disk is write-protected error. However, formatting the drive will cause data loss. If you had important files on the device, they are erased. Thus, we suggest recovering those files with a professional data recovery software; MiniTool Partition Wizard can help you with its Data Recovery feature to recover data from formatted USB drive.

Since this solution will lead to data loss, you might be reluctant to format your USB drive just to remove the write protection error. In this case, you should consider backing up all your data using MiniTool ShadowMaker. When a USB flash drive, pen drive, or SD card is plugged into a PC, it could be easily attacked by viruses attached to spyware downloaded from an illegal website. The files or folders on this device could also be easily filled with viruses that can lead to the disk is write-protected error on your storage device.

In this case, you need to download anti-virus software and set it to automatically scan your device. Once a virus is found, please kill it at once to remove the write protection from USB drive, pen drive or SD card. Some external devices including pen drives, or USB flash drives have a mechanical switch used to lock or unlock your device, but some don't. Therefore, you should check whether there is a switch like this on your device.

It could be put into write protection mode to prevent accidental writing. If it is, please move the switch to the unlocked position and then try copying files again. Perhaps this operation can be done successfully after the switch has been unlocked.

Sometimes if the USB stick or SD card is full with files, it is very likely to receive the write protection error when files are being copied to it.

Right-click this drive and select Properties. If there is enough free disk space and you still encounter this issue, it might be because the file you are trying to copy to the USB drive is too large. In addition, sometimes the file is set to the Read-only status, which indeed could cause the disk is write-protected error on a USB flash drive, micro SD card or pen drive.

Then you can view three options on the bottom, among them, please ensure that the Read-only option is unchecked. Remove the write-protection or use another disk. However, this feature may become a headache if it is not properly used or USB drive is corrupted.

In that case, the error "The disk is write protected" will drive you crazy, as you can't access data on that USB drive and the only option to fix it might be format write-protected USB complete, which won't be an easy job. What's worse, if files on that drive are important to you, formatting won't be a wise choice, for formatting wipes data.

Thus you need to disable or remove write-protection from USB disk first. Let's look at a real case found from a forum:. I have four USB flash drives and one of them is now marked 'write-protected' for no reason, as I didn't do anything to it. I found a solution for windows XP and tried on my own computer. But it didn't remove write protection. I just want to copy files from the USB disk to computer and then reformat it.

Can you help me on the write protection removal thing on Windows 10 computer or retrieve data? Many memory cards and USB flash drives have a small physical switch on the side edge. The switch is used to set write protect and makes the drive read only. If the flash drive is full of files and does not have free space and it is likely to be write-protected. You can right-click on the disk and choose Properties to check how much free space available on the drive.

Some computer uses or administrator of the machine set security setting on computer to prevent actions to write data to a USB disk. You need to remove such settings by modifying settings in registry. If you set files or folders on existing on the drive to "Read Only", you'll receive this error message when copying, editing or replacing files.

In that case, you need to navigate to file Properties to check whether the "Read-only" option is selected. Virus can infects everywhere data exists and cause various issues such as data damage, file loss, system crash, storage device failure, etc.

If causes mentioned above can't account for your case, it is likely your removable disk is broken or gets bad sectors. The disk might be old and just reaches its natural lifespan, as many disks have limitations on the amount of reading and writing data. Besides, normal read or write actions can't be done to bad sectors, thus you may need to seek help from disk verifying tools.

If you have stored some important data on your flash drive, then it's a good choice to enable the write protection before inserting it to computers which is not well protected by an-virus software.

There are chances that flash drive infects virus when connecting to public computers. Although write protecting on USB drive is not the foolproof action to prevent people from editing or deleting your data if they know how to disable this feature, it is better than keeping flash drive in open mode.

Here is a handy tutorial to add write protect. Examine the flash drive or memory card and find out the switch. You can move the switch to the lock location to enable the write protection for the device. Step 1 Right-click the drive letter associating with the flash drive in Windows Explorer and select "Properties" from context menu. Step 3 On the "Permissions for Removable Disk" Window you can see a section named "Permissions for Everyone" and two columns of check boxes.

Many USB drive and SD cards have a physical lock switch which can turn on and turn off write protection. Thus you need to examine whether the flash drive enables this lock. Check the left or right edge to find out the switch. If the switch is in the Lock side, just move it to the unlocked position. If this method can't solve the write protection error, please try following solutions.

Editing registry is another way to fix "The disk is write protected" error. Write protection can be enabled in Windows registry and it is not easy to write on USB devices. If you disable this feature via registry editor you can regain read and write privileges on removable drives. Here are the steps you can follow. Step 1 Open Registry Editor. Click Start button and enter "Regedit" in searching box and press enter key. If you see prompt given by user account control, click Yes.

Alternatively, you can get Registry Editor by typing Regedit. Step 2 In the left part of Registry Editor, navigate to:. Find out StorageDevicePolicies and open it. If it does not exist, you can create one. Step 3 Click StorageDevicePolicies key in the left and right-click the empty area on the right side. Then change its name to WriteProtect.