If you’re like most people, you probably rely on your USB drives to store all of your important files. But what if something happened and you couldn’t access your files? Well, there’s a simple solution: disable writing to USB drives with a registry hack. To do this, open the Windows Registry Editor by clicking “Start” and typing “regedit.” Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} In this key, you’ll see a string value called “DriveLetter.” Right-click on this value and select “New” from the menu. Enter “NoDriveTypeAutoRun” as the new value’s name and click OK. This will disable writing to USB drives with that particular drive letter. ..
Since Windows XP SP2, you can disable writing to USB devices altogether using a simple registry hack. Here it is:
You can also just download one of the following registry tweaks to enable or disable writing to USB drives.
Enable USB Write
Disable USB Write
Once you use the registry hack, you will have to reboot for the changes to take effect. One should also note that if you are using this trick, you should make sure that the users are not administrators on the computer, because they could easily change this setting back.
This works on Windows Vista as well. Here’s the window you’ll get when you try and write to a USB drive:
