How to prevent users from writing to USB drives!

Introduction.

I learnt this in a computer course organized by my school. It involves changing the registry, which can seriously screw your computer up, so be careful. I am not to be held responsible for anything that might happen to your computer. I hope you like it.

What you need.

An account with administrative privileges.

Guide.

Step 1.

Click the "Start" button and click "Run". Type "regedit" when the box opens up. Then click "Ok".



Step 2.

On the left hand panel, click "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE".



Step 3.

Next, click "System".



Step 4.

Click "CurrentControlSet".



Step 5.

When you're in the file Control, right click the right hand pane. Select "New" and then "Key".



Step 6.

Look at the left hand panel. You'll see a new folder created. Name it as "StorageDevicePolicies" and press "Enter" on your keyboard.



Step 7.

Now, in "StorageDevicePolicies", right click the right hand pane and select "New" and then "DWORD (32-bit) Value".



Step 8.

Name the new file as "WriteProtect" and press "Enter" on your keyboard.



Step 9.

Double click "WriteProtect" and change the "Value data" from "0" to "1". Now, click "Ok".



Step 10.

You should now see something like this:




Now, save everything and shut down your computer for the changes to take effect. When you start up your computer again, congratulations! No one can write anything to your USB drive ever again, unless they undo what you did.

Final say.

Thanks for reading my guide. Please post your constructive criticism below.

 

nice it works thought it would screw up my comp
ty bro

 

I didn't do any of this, but its been some time since my Realtek 32 GB flash drive has been write protected. I'm confused. Every time I format it to WBFS format, then want to bring it back, it says write protected. Then, I gotta go to my other computer to format it. Please help!

 

why would you want to do this? benefits?