Introduction

Some businesses need their employees to be able to view and use files on a USB device but they don’t want them to be able to copy files on the USB device. This is done to protect the business’s data from being stolen.

This guide shows you how to edit the registry and stop your computer from being able to copy files to a USB device.

Disable USB Write Access

Warning: Editing the registry can cause your system to crash or not function properly. Edit the registry at your own risk.

The registry key to disable USB write access is:

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

If you don’t feel comfortable editing the registry, download [1] this registry file and run it to disable USB write privileges.

Note: If you want to enable USB write privileges, download and run [2] this registry file.