how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

How to remove write protection from SD card and USB drive

By On Nov 8, 2015

Write protection on portable storage devices is pretty common these days. But SD cards and pendrives have been no strangers to write protection. After all, they’ve had it for a long time. While write protection is great for preventing your data from being erased or copied without your notice or consent, you might want to turn it off sometimes when you need to share data between devices. how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

Let’s take a look at some easy ways to remove write protection from your SD card and pendrive.

how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

How to Remove write protection from SD card and pendrive

1. Physical Toggle

All SD cards come with a two-way physical toggle for locking and unlocking the SD card. Initially, pendrives had them too. When switched to ‘lock’, the SD card or pendrive would have write protection turned ON and you couldn’t share data from it with another device. While SD cards these days still maintain the physical lock toggle, most pendrive manufacturers have ditched the whole idea of a physical toggle and moved on to password protection or security software. how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

If your SD on pendrive has a physical lock switch, you can just flip it to unlock mode and it will be good to go. Simple as that. how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

If it has password protection or if the physical switch doesn’t work, you will have to format the SD card or pendrive and this means you will lose all your data. But on the bright side, the write protection switches off. If that’s any consolation.how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

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Hook the SD/pendrive up to your PC/Notebook

Most notebooks and desktops have SD card slots so, you can insert your SD card into them. And it’s extremely hard not to find a PC without a USB port since the floppy drive had gone obsolete, so you’ll probably find a slot for your pendrive to plug in too. But in case you have a super slim notebook like the Apple Macbook 2015 without a USB port and SD slot, you’ll have to get a USB hub that plugs in to your notebook and compensates for the lack of ports.

2. Formatting on a PC running Windows

Once you’ve inserted the SD card/ pendrive into your PC, Open My Computer or if you’re running Windows 10, it’s just This PC. how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive
You will see a list of the icons of the drives on your computer along with the icon corresponding to your SD card or pendrive. Right Click on it.
Click on Format and on the pop-up click Start.
It will notify you once its done.

Sometimes, the icon doesn’t show up in My Computer. At times like these, you might have to dig a little deeper to find it. how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

Right click on the My Computer icon and select Manage.
The Computer Management window opens.
Find Disk Manager in the list on the left and left-click on it.
A list comes up on the center console. You can find your SD card or pendrive’s icon on it. Right click on it and select Format. how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive
A dialog box will po up asking for confirmation. Click Ok.

how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive

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3. Formatting on Mac OS X

Insert the SD card or pendrive into your PC/Notebook.
Click on Go in the menu up top, and select Applications.
In the Applications folder, open the Utilities folder.
Inside the Utilities folder, find Disk Utility icon and open it.
A pop up windows opens. In this window, on the left hand side console, find the name of your pendrive/SD card and click on it. how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive
A new set of options corresponding to it, open up to its right. On the icons bar on top of this window, click on Erase, how to remove write protection from sd card and pendrive
Select MS-DOS (exFAT) from the dropdown menu next to Volume Format.
Click on the Erase button down below. Once formatted, the write protection status is reset.