About this error
When you use Diskpart clean or clean all command on USB drive, you may receive the
following error message.
Diskpart has encountered an error the media is write protected
See the system event log for more information

Besides, this error message will occur when you use the command above on SD card,
HDD, SSD, SanDisk drive and more.
Causes
On the market, there is some mass storage device provides a write-protection function
to protect files and folders. However, sometimes, you still cannot access files and
folders. Besides, some drive does not have a write-protection switch and still can
be set to read-only mode.
In the following, I’ll list some possible causes.
Your storage media is damaged by virus or malware.
You accidentally set the read-only switch to ON side and the media
becomes un-writable.
You set the disk is to read-only in Property or Registry.
Your drive has physical damages, such as bad sectors.
Diskpart has encountered an error the media is write protected
– fixed
To fix this error and ensure the security of your data, you’d better to backup files first and then try the following
solutions one by one. Some of the following operations will lead to data loss.
Change the value of Write-protect key in Registry
Step 1. Type regedit in the Run
window.
Step 2. Navigate to the following sub-key and find
the WriteProtect key on the right panel.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
Step 3. If there is no StorageDevicePolicies key, you need to create
one. Right-click on Control, select New andKey option in order and then name it as StorageDevicePolicies.

Step 4. Right-clickStorageDevicePolicies, select New andDWORD (32-bit) Value and then name it
as WriteProtect.
Step 5. Right-click the newly created WriteProtect key
and change the Value to 0. And then click OKto exit this window.
Step 6. Check if you can access your storage device and data.
Type attributes disk clear readonly command first
When you use Diskpart clean command, you will receive Diskpart has encountered an
error the media is write protected on USB/SD card/HDD/SSD if you directly type clean
or clean all command instead of typing attributes disk clear readonly command
first.
Step 1. Type cmd in the search box,
right-click it and select Run as administrator.
Step 2. Type diskpart in the pop-up
window and press Enter.
Step 3. Type the commands below in order and hit Enter to
run it.

Step 4. Exit this window and check if it works.
Repair the corrupted file system
If your drive has corrupted file system, you can use Diskpart to clear all
write-protection file attributions from the disk and reformat it again.
Step 1.Open cmd and
type diskpart in the window.
Step 2. Type the commands below and press Enter.
list disk
select disk m (m refers to the drive containing corrupted
file system)
attributes disk clear readonly
clean
create partition primary
format fs=fat32 (or format fs=ntfs)

Step 3. Exit this window and then see if you can access your device
and data.
Change Read-only mode
If the device is in read-only mode, you need to check it first, and then change the
Current Read-only State from Yes to No.
Step 1. Open cmd window and type diskpart in the
command prompt.
Step 2. Type the following commands and hit Enter.

This command tells you if your device is in read-only mode. If yes, see Step 3. If
not, try to format the media for reuse.
Step 3. Type attributes disk clear readonlycommand in the command prompt and hit Enter.
Note:
1. If your disk is locked by an active process, you still need to reboot the
computer.
2. If your device is USB drive, you still need to check the write-protect switch.
Step 4. Try the clean command again and see if this error
occurs again.
Format the media for reuse
Formatting partition is the last resort to write-protected issues. It will lead to
data loss if you do not have a file backup.
To fix the Diskpart clean error: Diskpart has encountered an error the media is write
protected, you can use the write-protected removal tool AOMEI Partition Assistant. It can
format USB drive/SD card/ HDD/SSD with or without Write Protected in a very short
time. And all the steps are very easy to learn, even for a beginner. You just need
to follow the steps below and move your finger.
Step 1. Download the
write-protected removal tool – free AOMEI Partition Assistant and run it. Right
click the write-protected media in the main page, and then select Format
Partition.

Step 2. Select NTFS or FAT32 file system from the drop-down
menu and click OK to exit.

Step 3. Click Apply and then Proceed to
start the pending operation.

Besides above operation, AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you do more things and
fix some problems. You can use it to move partition to end of the disk, clone Windows to USB
drive, etc. Also, you can use it to fix virtual
disk service error the volume size is too big, extend volume greyed out,
Diskpart has encountered an error access is denied, etc.
AOMEI Partition Assistant, the free version of partition manager, can satisfy all
your basic needs. But if you want to fix the problem free version cannot or just get
more features, you can upgrade to AOMEI
Partition Assistant Professional or AOMEI Partition Assistant Server
according to your needs and the operating system you are using now.
With the Professional edition, you can convert
GPT to MBR without data loss using command prompt, allocate free space, fix
Convert to Basic Disk greyed out, and more.
Wrapping things up
To fix Diskpart has encountered an error the media is write protected, you can try to
change the value of the Writeprotect key in Registry, type attributes disk clear
readonly first and then clean, repair corrupted file system of the media, change the
read-only mode from Yes to No.
If none of the above methods works for you, you can try the last one – formatting
partition with a write-protected removal tool AOMEI Partition Assistant. With it,
all things become easy. You do not need to learn the complicated commands, which
will lead to data loss if one of the process goes wrong. In this software, all steps
are fixed and there is little risk to make a mistake.