How to Remove Write Protection on Micro SD Card

When you are trying to copy your files or media from your SD card, are you getting an error message that says your SD card is write-protected?

Don’t worry! We are going to help you remove the write protection on your Micro SD card using your Windows PC.

What Is Write Protection on a Micro SD Card?

The write protection feature on your Micro SD card allows you to protect your files from being replaced or deleted. When the Micro SD card is write-protected, you can view the data but you cannot copy or move the data from the SD card to your computer.

So, in simple terms, when the Micro SD card is write-protected, you can read the SD card data, but the write operation is suspended. So how do we get rid of the write protection on your Micro SD card, and why did it happen in the first place?

Before we take off the write protection of your Micro SD card and discuss why it was activated, we should recover the files first.

Recover Data From a Write Protected SD Card

Your Micro SD card could have turned on write protection for various reasons. It could be due to a virus attack, your PC is failing to read the SD card, your SD could be damaged, and many other reasons that led your SD card to automatically enable the write-protect feature to protect your files from being lost forever. Therefore, we would recommend you recover and create a copy of your data before you remove write protection from your Micro SD card.

Recovering the data is pretty easy and simple with the Disk Drill SD card recovery tool. It is extremely user-friendly and helps you recover all your data seamlessly. We will help you with a step-by-step process to recover your SD card data.

Step 1. Download the Disk Drill for your Windows and install using administrator credentials. Once you have installed the software, you will be able to restore 500 MB of data using the trial version.

Step 2. Select the Micro SD card you wish to restore data from. Click on “Search for lost data” to continue.

Step 3. Now, Disk Drill will start to locate files and will also split them into multiple categories such as photo, video, audio, and document. You can also pause in-between the search to recover a particular file or wait until the full search has been completed to recover everything.

Step 4. Once the scan is completed, you can either select the important files and click on “Recover,” or if you are trying to recover everything, click on the “Recover all” prompt.

Step 7. After you have selected Recover, you will be prompted to select a location you want to save the data. Save the data on any of your Local Disk, but avoid saving the files again on your Micro SD card, as you can corrupt the data and lose it forever.

How To Remove the Write Protection on a Micro SD Card?

So now that we have recovered your files, how do we remove write protection from the Micro SD card?

Method 1: Check the Lock Switch

Some SD card manufacturers have a manual write-protection switch on their Micro SD cards. The first thing you have to do when you get a write error on your PC is to remove the SD card from the external/internal card reader and check if the lock switch is turned on, disabling the write feature.

If it isn’t, push it down to turn off the Micro SD card write protection feature and connect it to your PC to confirm if you can copy/move files to your SD card. If this still hasn’t fixed the issue, you could try other solutions, such as.

Method 2: Use Diskpart Program

Using the Diskpart program, you should remove the write protection of your Micro SD card. You could do that by using the command prompt on your Windows PC.

Step 1. Connect your Micro SD card to your computer.

Step 2. Click on the Start button ⊞ and search for the command prompt. Or you could also open the command prompt by pressing the Win+R key and typing “cmd” in the Run box. Once done, click on “Ok” to open the command prompt.

Step 3. In the command prompt window type “diskpart” and hit the enter key.

Step 4. Now, type the following commands and press the Enter key after each line to remove the write protection from the Micro SD card.

• list disk
• select disk # (In the place of # write the number of your write-protected SD card that the command prompt shows. Most of the time it is, “disk 1”. )
• attributes disk clear readonly

Wait for the process to complete and then type “exit” and close your command prompt. This should remove write protection from the Micro SD card.

And if this still didn’t turn off write protection on your Micro SD card, we have one more trick up our sleeves, and this should get you rid of the write protection on your Micro SD card once and for all.

Method 3: Edit Registry

Woah! Hang on! This isn’t a scary task, it’s pretty simple and easy if you follow the steps, plus you get to show some computer wizardry to your peers and brag about your computer skills.

Before we move ahead, make a backup of your registry, so that, if you accidentally make a mistake, you could use the backup to bring everything back to the original state.

So, if you’re ready, then what are we waiting for?

Step 1. Connect your SD card to your computer.

Step 2. Open the Run window by pressing Win+R and type “regedit” and click on “ok” to open the registry editor

Step 3. Now copy-paste the following on the top bar and select StorageDevicePolicies folder.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

If you don’t find the folder, you can right-click on the “control” folder, click New ➝ Key, and name it as StorageDevicePolicies.

Step 4. Right-click on StorageDevicePolicies folder “New” ➝ DWORD (32-bit) and name it as “WriteProtect“.

Step 5. Double-click on “WriteProtect” and change the value to 0 and click on “ok”.

Step 6. Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer to complete the process.

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