Laptop secondary HDD is read only and can't be changed

Hi guys,

I’m having trouble with my laptop HDD, it is locked read only. This isn’t my OS drive, though I have a few programs on it, it is mostly pictures, music and games. A few months back I had to do a clean install of my OS drive. I uninstalled all the programs off of this drive but I kept the other data that is portable, and didn’t wipe this drive. That is probably why this issue is happening. I should say first it isn’t completely read only. I have installed both a program and a game to the drive today, and it didn’t give me any errors. However I cannot make changes to current files. In the root directory if I right click->New there will only be a folder there with the administrator shield. If I go into another folder, I can create more types of files when I right click-new, but I get ““Error 0x80070522: A required privilege is not held by the client" when I try to create a new .txt document, for instance. Lastly, if I right click a folder, uncheck read only, click apply, there is no longer a blue box, but if I press ok and go into its properties again, it is read only again.

These are all the steps I have tried.

The taking ownership shortcut :
Take Ownership Shortcut

Taking ownership the long way:
-Right click Drive->Properties->Security->Advanced->Owner->Edit
-Click Administrators (My-PC\Administrators)
-Check “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects” box then Apply

Taking ownership the long, manual way:
- Reboot into Safe Mode.
- Log on as Administrator.
- Click Start
- Type the three letters cmd
- Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
- Run the process as Administrator.
- Type the following commands and press Enter after each:
takeown /f d:\ /a /r /d y
cacls d:\ /t /c /g administrators:F System:F everyone:F
(Answer "yes" when prompted "Are you sure?")

Clearing disk attributes:
- Start-> Run then type cmd and launch with administrative rights
- Type-> diskpart
- Type-> list volume
- Type-> select volume #
- Type-> attributes vol clear readonly
-Go back to disk management and right click on the volume and Change Drive Letter and Paths
-Click remove on the drive letter and click OK
-Right click on the volume and change Drive Letter and Paths
-Click Add and add your drive letter again

Turning UAC off:
-Click Start > Run > SECPOL.MSC.
-Once the “Local Security Policy” window opens, under “Security Settings” > Local Policies > Security Options.
-Scroll down to find “User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and then disable it. Yes -> disable it. Then, click the OK button.
-Restart your computer.

So far, only the last step (turning UAC off) has given me full permissions for my drive. It doesn’t give me “Error 0x80070522: A required privilege is not held by the client" when I try to create a new file in that drive, and all the files are folders aren’t read only (although they still have the blue square in the read only check box in properties). But I don’t want to have UAC permanently off in order to be able to write to this drive. Is there something I haven’t tried yet that you could please help me with?

Thank you so much!

I had the same problem, nothing worked for me either, just ended up copying the data formatting then putting it back, I could remove data when booted into Ubuntu but it didn't help the permissions when I got back into Win7.

I think I fixed it. I redid this step:
- Reboot into Safe Mode.
- Log on as Administrator.
- Click Start
- Type the three letters cmd
- Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
- Run the process as Administrator.
- Type the following commands and press Enter after each:
takeown /f d:\ /a /r /d y
cacls d:\ /t /c /g administrators:F System:F everyone:F
(Answer "yes" when prompted "Are you sure?")

I don't think it worked the first time. Ran again and it took almost an hour for each command.

I still get the “Error 0x80070522: A required privilege is not held by the client" when I try to save any file to the root folder of the drive. Only folders work. But it is not an OS drive, so it shouldn't operate that way. Not sure why it's giving me that error then. It isn't a big deal, I don't think I would ever need to put anything besides folders in the root folder anyway. Although the folders still appear as read only in properties, I'm able create files and change settings again, without UAC being turned off. So I think it's fixed.