Any Hard Drive is Write-Protected

What's the make & model of the HDD? Have you checked the manufacturer's website to see if it's a firmware problem? If there's a firmware update for it, chances are that's what's causing it.

I was having the same problem with portions of my hard drive, I figured out it wasn't my external that was write protected but portions of my laptops internal rather. I figure that certain areas like, My documents and such are protected. To get around this I simply copied the files to the desktop, once there i was able to access them or copy them over to my external at ease. I haven't had a problem with this since, I also just delet the desktop copy once I transfer it over. Maybe this can help you all and maybe not, but it helped me.

Also, when moving files WITHIN its respected drive haven't been limited. If you can't even create a new folder on any of your drives your having trouble with, this won't help sorry.

here is the FIX for the Write Protected USB devices
Change this key if set to 1 back to 0
KEY= HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies\WriteProtect

Thumbscrew: Software USB Write Blocker

Hope this help's you all guy's :)

I followed the instructions listed (Windows Write Protection » T3CHWORKS) and everything seemed great, it listed 5 drives the last being the only "removable" one listed which is the one I'm having the write protected issue with. Now I did everything listed and it even said that the read only status was cleared successfully, yaaaay! But when I tried to put the files I want onto the drive it still says its write protected, and now when I go into CMD and follow the exact same instructions I followed not five minutes before, it only shows that I have two drives now... I don't understand. Any help?

Can you post the output of your diskpart commands? If you did not save it, just get into diskpart and do list disk and list volume for now. Not sure what could've happened...

Hi... that´s is happening to me too. If I apply the 'Diskpart' solution it works but when I restart the system the problem comes again. The hard drive is attached to the MoBo via a eSATA conection (so it´s not an USB drive)

I have dual boot (same OS, but one with problems and the other fresh) and with the old system I don´t have any problem.

Any definitive solution?

Thanks in advance!

Informativos said:

Hi... that´s is happening to me too. If I apply the 'Diskpart' solution it works but when I restart the system the problem comes again. The hard drive is attached to the MoBo via a eSATA conection (so it´s not an USB drive)

I have dual boot (same OS, but one with problems and the other fresh) and with the old system I don´t have any problem.

Any definitive solution?

Thanks in advance!

This is pretty much my exact situation.

SSD Drive for OS, and Raid 0 drives (obviously connected to Mobo) for storage. I can use the diskpart when I boot up to get it to work, but it is annoying to have to type every time. Not to mention my wife uses the computer from time to time and there is no way she would be comfortable typing that in every time to use the computer.

naydencho said:

FYI, it seems the link changed, but the solution still works! Here is the update to the link Sintek posted (thanks!)

Windows Write Protection T3CHWORKS -

And here is an exerpt of it, in case it changes again:

Recap

Start > Run "cmd"
type--> diskpart
type--> list volume
type--> select volume #
type--> attributes disk clear readonly

Thanks to the owner of T3CHWORKS!

Man I cant thank you enough ... u saved the day .. thanks mate ... greetings from Pakistan !!

I have had similar experience and found that due to having a large media library in the hard disk in question, my issue was not what i previously thought.

The Windows media player was set to re-organize and or rename files according to my Rip disk settings; This acts like a write protect function if any write-protected media is present. and crazy as it sounds that will cause you to get the "Remove Write Protection" error telling you that disk or volume is write protected.

what i found to fix this was to remove the settings in media player allowing it to re-organize and rename files, after which i went to the tools/advanced/restore media library and allowed it to dump my current library and reset it.

after doing that it is often accessible, if not then try a reboot to clear the settings, or use the DISKPART functions to clear the write protection.

I giggled to myself when i started doing google searches and found soooo many old posts that were also in vista forums about the same kind of thing, that were probably the same fix.

I would be interested to know how many find this to fix the issue for them btw:)