Enable or Disable Disk Write Protection in Windows  

spapakons said:

Thank you for your replies, nothing I tried seemed to work, so I returned it for replacement under Warranty.

I was afraid it may have been dead, but at least it's covered under warranty.

Cesare said:

Hi Brink. Is there a possibility to write protect a USB Flash Drive on any computer just like a CD-ROM?

Hello mate,

Some USB flash drives will have a hardware write protect switch.

If the USB was formatted with NTFS, you could use permissions to deny write access on any computer.

Change Permissions of Objects for Users and Groups in Windows 10

Cesare said:

My USB flash drive is an 8GB USB and it is full. When I try to deny access to any file or folder using NTFS Security Options, it says that the permissions cannot be saved to the disk because there is no free space on the USB drive. Is this normal, and how much space is required to save permission changes?

It shouldn't require much space if you are able to free up some.

Cesare said:

OK. I simply like the idea on having to make a USB Flash Drive containing Windows, permanently Read-only like a CD-ROM.

If you mean a Windows installer, that could be done but is pointless as the version becomes obsolete after each build upgrade. No point installing an old version and then having to do a full upgrade.

If you mean a bootable version of Windows (Windows To Go), this is impossible. Windows creates temporary files all the time and that needs write access.

Cesare said:

I am talking about general data written to a USB Flash Drive. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, pictures, music and video. Those are the type of data files that I want to set permanently as Read-only just like a CD-ROM disk. Do you know any workarounds on making any USB Flash Drives permanently Read-only like CD-ROMs?

If you like, you could get a USB flash drive with a physical write protect switch like below to use. It'll make it easy to turn on/off write protect as needed by the switch.

https://www.amazon.com/FlashBlu30-Ph.../dp/B00JJIEEA6