Windows 7 - write protected external sata drive

May be a bios problem

recently tried windows media center - which fired up by installing something which turned out to be on my ext sata drive.

now drive is write protected.

can't unlock it

will not accept any changes to security to drive - because it is write protected.

my login has administrator privilege


one suggestion has been to use partition program to reset write protection but not destroy data

it seems that the bios may have a glitch which may have locked it up

Ideas??

It sounds like you pressed the wrong button when booting your computer which changed the properties of the drive.

There's a few solutions I've found on the web:

• Reset CMOS to optimal settings.

• Open Regedit and navigate to:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrrentControlSet\Control\StroageDevicePolicies
  If there is a WriteProtect key (REG_DWORD) then
  1 = Write Protect On
  0 = Write Protect Off

• 1. Go to the disk properties page.
  2. Select the 'Hardware' tab.
  3. In the 'All disk drives' list, select the name of the external device.
  4. Click the 'Properties' button.
  5. Select the 'Policies' tab.
  6. Under 'Write caching and Safe Removal', select 'Optimize for performance'.

Good luck

a few comments for others who may have a similar problem

1) the registry description provided above does not look anything like my Windows 7 registry so I looked around to try to find something similar -- no luck

2) I seem to have fixed the problem by installing the ext drive on my vista based laptop and setting sharing and security tabs found in "properties" to

"everyone" full control

when reinstalled on Windows 7 - the drive inherited the permissions

3) if after some time, if permissions are reset - then the problem is in the bios cmos

thanks for the advice

clearly Windows 7 not ready for prime time

well after setting overnight, the boot-up resulted in "write protected"

so- this is not a Windows 7 per say and not necessarily a registry problem.

must be a cmos or bios problem

have contacted HP for some help

as a temporary work around change the drive letter and paths for the disk in question.

this works until I do a cold start boot up.

takes about five minutes.

HP not much help - their solutions do not match the options in my version of Windows 7

OMG.. your 3rd options worked! after scouring the web, changing the reg keys, doing diskpart, i was going to quit. luckily enough i came across this! so thanks very much!

P.S. out of curiousity, would you know the reason why this happened?

Hey I recently began to have this problem and I did not feel like messing with the bios again. So I safely removed the esata drive but kept it connected and powered on now open the properties on any drive and go to the hardware tab. Find your drive that is acting up. It will be denoted by a yellow flag. Click then go into the sharing tab. Go to advance sharing button. Under the Everyone category give full control. Apply. Close down the menu. Shut off the power to that esata drive. Turn the power back on. Your in business.