How to Remove Write Protection on Micro SD Card

Updated on: January 2, 2026

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Is your micro SD card refusing to let you delete, rename, or add new files? All the while, you can still open and copy them fine? If this is the case, your micro SD card is write-protected. This means a built-in safeguard, either physical or software-level, is preventing any changes to the card or its data.

We’ll show you a few ways you can remove write protection from a micro SD card on Windows and macOS.

Table of Contents

What Is Write Protection on a Micro SD Card?

Write protection is a feature of micro SD cards that, when enabled, prevents any changes to the data on the card. You can still read and access your files when the micro SD card is write-protected, but you won’t be able to modify or delete existing data, nor can you write new data to the card.

There are two types of write protection: physical and software-based.

Physical write protection – It’s common for memory cards (or their adapters) to come with physical write protection controlled by a small switch on the side of the card itself.
Software-based write protection – This can be enabled by software or caused by corruption to the card.

Some micro SD cards automatically enable permanent hardware write protection as they near their maximum number of read/write cycles in order to preserve the existing data. This form of protection cannot be removed.

Before we take off the write protection of your micro SD card and discuss why it was activated, we should recover the files first.

How to Recover Data from a Write Protected SD Card

At this point, it may not be certain what’s caused your micro SD card to become write-protected. It could be due to a virus attack, your PC is failing to read the SD card, your SD could be damaged, or any other reason. Regardless of what’s causing the write-protection, it’s recommended that you recover the data from the write-protected micro SD card using data recovery software.

In this guide, we are going to be using Disk Drill, for a few reasons. It’s available on both Windows and macOS and lets you recover up to 100 MB for free (Windows only), enough to recover essential data or at least try the software. If the micro SD card was used in a camera or drone, its Advanced Camera Recovery feature is dedicated to recovering fragmented video files.

We will help you with a step-by-step process to recover your SD card data.

Download, install, and open Disk Drill.
Select the micro SD card you wish to restore data from. Click on Search for lost data to continue.
Click Advanced Camera Recovery if you only want to recover photo and video files shot by a camera or drone. Otherwise, if you want to recover all file types, click Universal Scan.
Now, Disk Drill will start to locate files and categorize them by file format. You can explore what Disk Drill has found so far, or wait until the full search has been completed to recover everything. When ready, click Review found items.
Preview and select the files you want to recover. Any file that can be previewed can be recovered, and you can refine the search results using the built-in filter options. When you’re ready, click Recover. If you simply want to recover everything on the card, don’t select any files and click Recover all instead.
Choose where you want to save the recovered data. This must be on a separate physical drive, as saving the files to the same micro SD card you’re recovering them from will cause corruption. Click Next to recover the files.

How to Remove the Write Protection on a Micro SD Card on Windows

So now that we have recovered your files, how do we remove write protection from the micro SD card? In this section, we’ll explain how you can do this on Windows using built-in functionalities and utilities such as DiskPart and the Registry Editor.

Method 1: Check the Lock Switch

The lock switch is not located on the micro SD card, but rather the adapter you can put the card in to connect it to certain devices or connectors. As such, the adapter acts as a point of vulnerability, and the SD card reader may not read the flag correctly, resulting in read-only mode.

Just make sure that the micro SD card is well-seated in the adapter. If it still doesn’t work, try the write protected SD card in another device and reader to try and localize the issue. Should nothing work, move to the next method.

Method 2: Use Diskpart Program

Using the Diskpart program, you can remove software-dictated write protection from your micro SD card. You could do that by using the Terminal on your Windows PC.

Here’s how to remove write protection on micro SD card without a switch:

Connect your micro SD card to your computer.
Right-click Start and click Terminal (Admin).
In the terminal, type diskpart and hit the Enter key.
Now, type the following commands and press the Enter key after each line to remove the write protection from the micro SD card.
- list disk
- select disk # (In the place of # write the number of your write-protected SD card that the Terminal shows. Most of the time it is, “Disk 1”. )
- attributes disk clear readonly
Wait for the process to complete and then type exit and close your Terminal window. This should remove write protection from the micro SD card.

And if this still didn’t turn off write protection on your micro SD card, we have more tricks up our sleeves, and these should get you rid of the write protection on your micro SD card once and for all.

Method 3: Edit Registry

Whoa! Hang on! This isn’t a scary task, it’s pretty simple and easy if you follow the steps, plus you get to show some computer wizardry to your peers and brag about your computer skills.

Before we move ahead, make a backup of your registry, so that, if you accidentally make a mistake, you could use the backup to bring everything back to the original state.

These steps will disable read-only mode for all devices and volumes in Windows. Therefore, it’s best to restore the original registry values once you’re finished with the SD card.

This is how to remove write protection from an SD card using the Registry Editor:

Connect your SD card to your computer.
Open the Run window by pressing Win+R and type “regedit” and click on “OK” to open the registry editor.
Now copy-paste the following on the top bar and select StorageDevicePolicies folder.
```
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
```
If you don’t find the folder, you can right-click on the “control” folder, click New ➝ Key, and name it as StorageDevicePolicies.
Right-click on StorageDevicePolicies folder “New” ➝ DWORD (32-bit) and name it as “WriteProtect“.
Double-click on “WriteProtect” and change the value to 0 and click on “OK”.
Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer to complete the process.

How to Remove Write Protection from Micro SD Card on Mac

Team Apple? No worries! We also have ways to remove write protection from your micro SD card for Mac users, all within the Mac system settings and built-in tools. Let’s explore each of them in this section.

Method 1: Reinsert the micro SD Card

This may seem like a simple method, but it is effective because macOS always mounts volumes in read/write mode by default. This means that if something has caused your write-protected micro SD card to be read-only, it will revert to normal upon reconnection. As always, be mindful that if your adapter has a write lock, it’s in the disabled position.

Method 2: Change Permissions

Like in Windows, Mac provides a way to potentially remove the write protection from your micro SD card by changing permissions. If you only use the micro SD card in a single computer, this is unlikely to be the cause, but it’s always worth checking. Simply follow these easy steps to do so:

Connect your micro SD card to your Mac using its card reader slot or an external card reader.
Open Finder to locate your micro SD card.
On the left pane of Finder, right-click on your card and select “Get info”. Alternatively, pressing Command + I accomplishes the same task.
Go to the “Sharing & Permissions” section and click on the Lock icon. Enter your Mac admin’s credentials when prompted to unlock the settings.
Under the Privilege column, change the option to “Read & Write” for the user everyone.

Method 3: Run First Aid

MacOS has a built-in utility, Disk Utility, which is similar to Disk Management on Windows. Within Disk Utility, there is the “First Aid” feature, which repairs disk errors that can remove write protection from your micro SD card. If a micro SD card mounts in read-only mode, it means it’s corrupted. Running the First Aid feature may fix the file system damage, restoring read/write access to the card. Let’s dive into how to run this utility:

Open Disk Utility by going to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Select your micro SD card under the External devices on the left pane. Then, locate the “First Aid” feature among the options at the top.
Follow the instructions to run First Aid.

This enables Disk Utility to find and repair disk errors, including write protection issues. Once the process finishes, you can verify if your card is accessible now.

Conclusion

All of the methods outlined in this guide will help you restore your micro SD that’s write-protected to working order, one way or another. If it was caused by a software error, consider replacing the card, or only using it to store unimportant data.

Your next step is to account for these errors going forward. In order to protect your data from being locked behind a read-only message, keeping a safe copy of it on another device is key. Automated backups are difficult with portable media like micro SD cards, so the best you can do is make sure you’re backing up essential files every once in a while.

Which one of the methods in this guide worked for you? Did you find another way to remove write protection? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

FAQ:

How to remove write protection on SanDisk micro SD card

If your micro SD card is in an adapter with a lock switch, make sure the switch is in the ‘off’ position. If the lock switch is off and your SD card is still failing to write, try disabling the write protection using the Diskpart utility. If disabling the write protection with Diskpart fails, you can try modifying the registry, and this should finally remove the write protection of your SanDisk micro SD card. Just be mindful doing this via the Registry will make all drives and volumes visible, so it’s best to revert back to the original settings once you’re done.

Why is my micro SD card write protected?

It could be due to turning on the write-protect switch, a virus attack, an error in your PC that is failing to read your SD card, or your card may be dying. The micro SD card’s controller may have also suspended write operations as the card is nearing its maximum number of read/write cycles.

What to do if I can’t remove write protection on the micro SD card?

If you’ve tried removing write protection with software-based fixes and confirmed the write-protection switch is off, what you’re likely experiencing is hardware-level write protection. Micro SD cards only have a finite number of read/write cycles, and when you’re starting to reach that limit, the card prevents any write attempts to preserve the data on the card. Your only option is to copy that data to a new card.

How to remove write protection on SD card without switch?

To remove write protection on an SD card without the write protection lock switch, you can use DiskPart or Registry Editor on Windows. On macOS, you can also change the system permissions to Read & Write for your SD card or use Disk Utility. If none of these methods worked, and your write-protection switch is off, the card may be nearing the end of its read/write limit, and so you will need to move the data to a new SD card.