Disable Writing to USB Drives in registry

Disable Writing to USB Drives

A common security concern at organizations is allowing users to plug in a usb flash drive, because they could so easily copy corporate data.

Since Windows XP SP2, you can disable writing to USB devices altogether using a simple registry hack. Here it is:

Disable

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies]
“WriteProtect”=dword:00000001

Enable

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies]
“WriteProtect”=dword:00000000

You can also just download one of the following registry tweaks to enable or disable writing to USB drives.