How to Write-Protect Your USB Flash Drive

Many a time, it becomes necessary for us to write protect our USB flash drive so as to protect it from viruses and other malware programs. As flash drives are so popular and most widely used to move data between computers, they are the prime target for attackers as a means to get infections spread around the computer world. Also, since USB drive is not a Read-Only Memory (ROM), the data inside it can easily be modified or deleted by malware programs.

But unfortunately, most of the new flash drives do not come with a write-protect feature as the manufacturers wish to cut down the cost of production. Hence, the only way to write-protect your USB flash drives is to enable this feature on your own computer.

Steps to Write-Protect Your USB Drive:

This can be done by adding a small entry to the Windows registry which acts as a switch that can be enabled to make use of the write protection or disabled to allow write access. Here we go:

1. Open the Registry Editor (Open the “Run” dialog box, type regedit and hit “Enter”).
2. Navigate to the following Registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\
3. Create a New Key named as StorageDevicePolicies. To do this, right-click on Control, again click on New -> Key and name it as StorageDevicePolicies.
4. Now right-click on  StorageDevicePolicies and create a New -> DWORD (32-bit) Valueand name it as WriteProtect.
   
5. Double-click on WriteProtect and set the Value data to 1.
   Now the right-protection for USB drives is enabled on your computer (no restart required) and thus it would not be possible for anyone or any program to add/delete the contents from your USB flash drive. Any attempt to copy or download the files onto the USB drive will result in the following error message being displayed.
   

To revert and remove the write-protection, all you need to do is just change the Value data forWriteProtect (Step-5) from 1 back to 0. Now write access to all the USB devices is re-enabled.

Sometimes it may seem difficult to remember and follow the above mentioned steps each time you want to enable/disable the write protection. Hence as an alternative way, there are many tools available to automatically enable/disable the write-protection feature. One of my favorite tool is USB Write Protect by Naresh Manadhar.

Using this tool, you can limit write access to your USB drives with just a click of a button. You can download this tool from the following link:

USBWriteProtect

I hope you’ve now understood how to enable or disable write-protection of USB devices on your computer.

Trick to Speedup Pendrive for Faster Data Transfer Rate

Guys You must have Experienced That the Speed of Your Pendrive has Slow Down After Few Days Of Usage. So Today I will Show You some Effective Tricks to Speedup your Pendrive Data Transfer Rate.

First Thing First, Your pendrive Data Transfer Rate Depends On Some Factors Like :

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1. Age of your Pendrive: 

As i Said, When You buy a New Pendrive it works Fast but as it gets older, The Data Transfer Rate Starts Decreasing. 

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2. Types of Files :

Data Transfer Rate Depends on Types of Files You are Transferring. Songs, Docs, Videos May get Transferred very Quickly.

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3.Location of Files : 

Data Transfer Rate also depends on Locations of Files. If you want to transfer a bunch of files to Same Drive But another Folder then it will get Transferred very Fast. But if You want to Transfer Files from one Drive to another then it will Take some Time Comparatively. Likewise in Pendrive.

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4. USB Port Version:

USB Port Version 2.0 is Most popular and the computers which are manufactured after year 2000 Have 2.0  Usb port Version. This version of USB port give you the Speed of 35mbps (Theortically)

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How to Speedup your Pendrive For Faster Data Transfer:

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We will Change The File System To NTFS of your pendrive and Also We will Change the Device Policy inorder To Speedup your Pendrive. Follow Below Steps 

1: Plugin your Pendrive, Right click on your pendrive and select Format (You will Loose All your data in your pendrive so better Take a backup) Then,Select NTFS File system, Uncheck Quick Format And Click On Start.

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Note: We Are Changing The File system to NTFS Because FAT 32 Can not Handle Large amount of data

2: After Formating Your Pendrive and Converting it To NTFS file System, Its now Time to Change the Device Policy.

Now Again Goto Your Pendrive Properties , click on  Hardware Tab. Select Your Usb Device from the list and click on Properties .

After Clicking on Properties You will see a new Dialog Box,Click on Change Settings, Another Dialog Box will appear , Click on Policy Tab and Select Better Performance, Click ok . 

Thats it. I will Recommend to Restart Your Computer

Note :  Understand That After Changing the Device Policy , Your Data Transfer Speed Will Increase But Make Sure You Click on " Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media"  Before Removing Your Pendrive.

- See more at: http://www.geekofreak.com/2013/07/Speedup-Pendrive-Data-Transfer-Rate.html#sthash.jjyFXESt.dpuf

How to Format unformatable USB Flash Drive

How to format usb flash drive using MS-DOS.many times we need to format our usb drives, people find it difficult so today reading this article you will be able to format you usb very easily,lets see the steps.

1) Click Start > Run... and type cmd in the box then Click OK


2) The command prompt window appears.


3) Type the following command:

format X:

Note: Replace "X:" with the letter of your USB Flash Drive.
You can use "diskpart" to list all drive letters.

4) If you want to format it as FAT32 then type:

format X: /FS:FAT32

5) After typing one of the above commands, press Enter

6) When it asks for pressing Enter again, just press it to confirm.

7) It will prompt you to enter a name for the drive, write it and hit Enter