Why Did My USB Flash Drive Becomes “Read-Only” And How Can I Fix It?

Question

Suddenly my USB Flash Drive (32gb SanDisk Cruzer) is suddenly read-only, and I'm not sure why.

There is no "read-only" switch on the drive. All of the data is still there. I can’t access and neither I am able copy data from it anymore. There are 16gb free on the drive. The OS is Windows 10 x64 bit. Till yesterday my flash drive was working great.

If I try to create a new folder on the drive, it tells me the drive is write-protected.

I plugged it into another computer but it is read-only there, too.

What causing it to display read-only error and how can I fix it and bring back my dive to read/write mode as it was earlier? I know, I can fix it by reformatting it but I do not want to lose data from it. Please suggest solution.

Answer 1

Well, if you do not want to lose data from your read-only USB flash drive, then first you must recover your important data from your USB flash drive. You can try USB file recovery too, it will recover photos, videos and audio files from the USB.

Once, you recover important media files, then follow the below solutions to fix “read-only” error of USB flash drive.

First of all check if your USB drive has any switch lock or not, if there is any lock switch, then simply slide the lock switch to unlock position. Now check your USB drive.

If that also does not fix your problem, then you can run CMD command to fix read-only error of USB Drive.

I hope this will fix your issue.