Cannot write to external hard drives

[Akominatus]

I have two external hard drives connected to my PC, one a LaCie and one a Pleiades. I never had any problem reading and writing to and from these drives with earlier versions of Windows, or indeed when they are connected to other computers, but Windows 7 will not let me write to them or modify them in any way, though I can still read files on them.

If I try to, e.g., create a new folder or copy a file onto the external disk, I get the message "You need to confirm this operation". If I then click on "Continue", the same message is repeated ad nauseam. I am not given any opportunity to confirm. I am the administrator and indeed only user of this computer, and this has become enough of a major problem that I am seriously considering dumping Windows 7 and going back to an earlier version.

Any help or suggestion would be very welcome.

 

[indianacarnie]

Welcome to the forums Akominatus!

New one to me that's for sure. Have you tried running a sfc/scannow to find and possibly repair any corrupted system files? Heres a link to a tutorial on how to do that if you haven't before. Just click on the link.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

 

[RogerR]

What is the file format on those drives? Are you trying to write NTFS to a FAT32 drive? Also check permissions to ensure you have write privileges.

 

[whs]

It's a permission problem. That happens often especially for disks that came from XP. Change the permissions in the Security tab of Properties.