I get this exact error when simply trying to create a directory in the root of the drive:
"The disk is write-protected.
Remove the write-protection or use another disk."
I'm logging in as the local admin, domain admin makes no diff. I've also given full permissions to "everyone" with no luck. How the heck can I fix this bugger?
on cmd prompt launch "diskpart.exe"
on the diskpart prompt, do the following
LISTDISK |
This will give you a list of all disks in your system
Note down the number of your problem disk, then do the folloiwng
SELECTDISKx |
Where x is the number of your problem disk, then do the following
DETAILDISK |
This will list all the details of your problem disk
Check if the ReadOnly flag is set to Yes
If the ReadOnly flag is set to Yes, do the follwing
ATTRDISKCLEARREADONLY |
This should clear the flag on the disk, please retry your disk operations
If ths does not solve it, we have another flag on the volume, same command, but now on volume:
LISTVOLUME |
SELECTVOLUMEx |
DETAILVOLUME |
ATTRVOLUMECLEARREADONLY |
HTH,
Edwin.
- Marked as answer by David Shen Monday, September 22, 2008 8:00 AM
on cmd prompt launch "diskpart.exe"
on the diskpart prompt, do the following
LISTDISK |
This will give you a list of all disks in your system
Note down the number of your problem disk, then do the folloiwng
SELECTDISKx |
Where x is the number of your problem disk, then do the following
DETAILDISK |
This will list all the details of your problem disk
Check if the ReadOnly flag is set to Yes
If the ReadOnly flag is set to Yes, do the follwing
ATTRDISKCLEARREADONLY |
This should clear the flag on the disk, please retry your disk operations
If ths does not solve it, we have another flag on the volume, same command, but now on volume:
LISTVOLUME |
SELECTVOLUMEx |
DETAILVOLUME |
ATTRVOLUMECLEARREADONLY |
HTH,
Edwin.
- Marked as answer by David Shen Monday, September 22, 2008 8:00 AM
Thanks so much for the fix!
- Marked as answer by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Friday, July 03, 2009 1:23 PM
- Marked as answer by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Friday, July 03, 2009 1:23 PM
It could be that the ReadOnly flag is on, do the followingEdwin...
on cmd prompt launch "diskpart.exe"
had a problem where WIN7 said the entire drive was write protected, but even having done (what isn't quoted for brevity's sake) down to the volume level it still showed "NO" for the read only flag - and on all other flags. Just for laughs and giggles I did the ATTRVOLUMECLEARREADONLY on it anyway. Amazingly, it worked, despite the NO listed. I was immediately able to move, copy, delete, ect., any files on the drive despite the "write protected" message just minutes before.
You might want to include a "do it even if it says NO" the next time you pass out these instructions, as it appears the NO listed for READONLY may be misleading.
My second disk gets write protected, even when I have all rights.
The ReadOnly attribute is set to no and clearing it does not solve it at all for me!
Anyone other suggestions?
This cached value can be different than the actual value on the disk.
This will list as "NO" but in fact it is "YES" on the disk or volume.
that would explain the situation you are describing.
This caching behaviour is documented here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/918188
The article is written for 2003,
I am not 100% sure if this is still the same for Vista/Win7
nor am I sure in regards to Server 2008/R2
HTH,
Edwin.
- Marked as answer by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Friday, November 20, 2009 1:06 PM
- Edited by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Friday, November 20, 2009 1:06 PM spell check
This cached value can be different than the actual value on the disk.
This will list as "NO" but in fact it is "YES" on the disk or volume.
that would explain the situation you are describing.
This caching behaviour is documented here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/918188
The article is written for 2003,
I am not 100% sure if this is still the same for Vista/Win7
nor am I sure in regards to Server 2008/R2
HTH,
Edwin.
- Marked as answer by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Friday, November 20, 2009 1:06 PM
- Edited by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Friday, November 20, 2009 1:06 PM spell check
Okay I have the same problem here.
My second disk gets write protected, even when I have all rights.
The ReadOnly attribute is set to no and clearing it does not solve it at all for me!
Anyone other suggestions?
Can you give some more info ?
- ReadOnly attribute on both DISK as well as VOLUME
- you say "disk gets write protected" - tell us where you see this, or how you know
- are you using external storage ?
- is this "disk" a partition on the same physical disk, or is it actually a different disk
Please volunteer as much info as possible
thanks,
Edwin.
Okay I have the same problem here.
My second disk gets write protected, even when I have all rights.
The ReadOnly attribute is set to no and clearing it does not solve it at all for me!
Anyone other suggestions?
Can you give some more info ?
- ReadOnly attribute on both DISK as well as VOLUME
- you say "disk gets write protected" - tell us where you see this, or how you know
- are you using external storage ?
- is this "disk" a partition on the same physical disk, or is it actually a different disk
Please volunteer as much info as possible
thanks,
Edwin.
- Currently it says no on both disk and volume
- It says "This medium is write-protected" when trying to delete or create a file on the disk.
- It's not an external hdd.
- This disk is actually a different disk so a new physical disk.
While looking further on the internet, I've read somewhere this issue has something to do with a corrupted MBR of that hdd.
So I fixed the MBR. It's been a week already since I had this problem so I hope this was the solution.
(Usually I had this problem after booting from power off state. A reboot sometimes fixed it temporarily)
I'll post a message if the problem returns.
Hope this info helps.
Martijn
I've been experiencing the same situation on my second partition. The attr volume clear readonly command fixed me right up. I run two backup programs, see if they match what you're seeing.
Microsoft Home Server (updated for win7 compatability)
Drive Snapshot
I believe I haven't run the snapshot in some while so I'm thinking of blaming the WHS. I hope this helps narrow down the problem, I'll continue to test on my end.
I just wanted to thank you for this info. I have searched high and low online for a solution to this issue and could not find anyone having the same problem. Even though the read only flag said no, I did what you suggested and it worked for me as well. I am not sure why or how this happened but thaks for the solution!
you are very welcome.
In these forums, if a post is helpful, please feel free to click the green arrow above the "vote as helpful" on the post, this will give "points" to the author of the helping post.
Rgds,
edwin.
Funny, it's always the same disk, which sometimes "gets" read-only. I don't use any backup nor other special software and the server has just two roles: Hyper-V and File Services. I suspect 64-bit drivers for Promise FastTrak TX4310 SATA RAID controller, because the server has only two shares (except admin ones), but only the disk on RAID controller has manifested this behavior.
Either this or something else IT IS just REALLY ANNOYING and not only occasional behavior on THE SERVER!!!
Hi All,
I have this problem on Win7 with two RAID 1 Disks each split into a number of Volumes. At virtually every boot one or more of the Volumes are Write Protected. The affected Volumes varies as does the number. The Diskpart fix works but at re-boot or cold boot the problem persists.
Looking around the WEB there appears to be no consistency regarding System Configuration, Drive Configuration or hardware type. The only consistent parameter id Microsoft Windows of some form or other starting at WinXP.
It seems to me that everyone is dancing around this problem & no ones actually trying to fix it. Indeed, no one at Microsoft seems to have even acknowledged that a problem event exists.
Someone at Microsoft needs to pick this up & run with it until resolved. . .please.
Chinga
Same problem here with one of my Windows Server 2008 R2(!) disks and your suggestion with clearing read-only flag even if diskpart's detail shows No, helped me. Many thanks.
Funny, it's always the same disk, which sometimes "gets" read-only. I don't use any backup nor other special software and the server has just two roles: Hyper-V and File Services. I suspect 64-bit drivers for Promise FastTrak TX4310 SATA RAID controller, because the server has only two shares (except admin ones), but only the disk on RAID controller has manifested this behavior.
Either this or something else IT IS just REALLY ANNOYING and not only occasional behavior on THE SERVER!!!
Hi David,
I have the same controller (running windows 2003 server X64 R2) on my there are 4 disks in raid, same behavior here. Sometimes 'read-only" sometimes not. Also this procedure helps, some times after a few attempts.
Greetz, Axel
I have tried clearing the attributes on both the disk and volume and while on disk it never shows any write protection on the volume it shows Current Read-only State : Yes. No matter how i clear the attributes it stays write protected.
Here is the kicker. This happens to every external drive i have connected to this laptop so far. I can plug the same drive into any other machine and it acts perfectly normal.
The laptop is a HP TouchSmart tm2. It seems like something in the driver or electronically just stopped working correctly.
I'm at my wits end and i'm begging for help
FYI i'm logged in as domain admin. This is a recent change in behavior as i used to be able to use the same external drives without a issue.
crt
- Edited by Chad Taylor Friday, January 14, 2011 9:43 PM forgot to explain issue
I have tried clearing the attributes on both the disk and volume and while on disk it never shows any write protection on the volume it shows Current Read-only State : Yes. No matter how i clear the attributes it stays write protected.
Here is the kicker. This happens to every external drive i have connected to this laptop so far. I can plug the same drive into any other machine and it acts perfectly normal.
The laptop is a HP TouchSmart tm2. It seems like something in the driver or electronically just stopped working correctly.
I'm at my wits end and i'm begging for help
FYI i'm logged in as domain admin. This is a recent change in behavior as i used to be able to use the same external drives without a issue.
crt
- Edited by Chad Taylor Friday, January 14, 2011 9:43 PM forgot to explain issue
Hi Edwin,
you saved my life with this help, as I'm currently working on a migration to a new PDC and this write-protected hard-drive made me sick... I have no time for things like this..
I wish I had found your great help earlier.
BTW: I have a 64 Bit Promise FastTrack SAS Controller in my Board, too, but of type TX4650.
Thank you very much,
Knut
Just want to report that I'm having similar issues - we got a new Server 2008 r2 set up with File Services and Hyper V roles enabled. C drive is fine, but drive E (jmicron RAID 1, dual 2TB drives) comes up as write-protected every time I reboot. I tried other fixes, such as reformatting the drive or resetting the RAID settings, but those only work until I have to restart it again. I tried doing the diskpart on both drive and volume, and both details listed "readonly" setting as no. I did the "attr disk/volume clear readonly" anyway, but that didn't work. Tried changing drive letter, but that didn't work, either. Restarted and drive still was write protected, but I changed drive letter back and now I can write to the disk again. I'm not sure what will happen next time I have to restart, but at least its working for now.Well, I had to restart the server for the first time since the last time I posted, and it did exactly the same thing where disk E (the RAID) said it was write protected again. I went into Disk Management and changed the driver letter to G: then restarted, and now the drive is no longer write-protected. Annoying, but at least it's a simple workaround until a patch is released.
This is so SILLY! its been what many years since vista came, then win7 and STILL this issue is a PROBLEM! Im starting to get seriously sick to do this EVERY TIME i start my computer, its insane! I had this issue before...many times...many re-installs...many what not and it started in vista...moved over to windows 7 and what we can expect from next MS release is that this issue will still be here? If i wanted to run command prompt os i would use bsd or some other unix distro, but i dont want that. Now im forced to start command, and do all the diskpart commands, both for the drive and then for the volume.
I boot up linux for a week in a row and no errors, clearly its not a hardware error as it would show similar errors in different os'es and similarity in hardware of us users in here having this issue?
Is anyone at MS looking into this ? I mean a freggin error years back and to see it still active today makes you think no one really cares about this. Come on MS u got the resources to dig into this further and for once REMOVE this stupid error out of windows!
Hi All, have run into this issue today, right before shipping the system out.
Tried using the diskpart trick but with no luck.
I found some reg keys that finally unlocked the write protection.
At your own risk, try modifying the keys below (chg the "1" to a "0"):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
Not sure which key(s) fixed the problem but will have to monitor the system to see if they change back.
Good luck and Cheers!
Followup: GPO's changed these back to a value of "1" because I do not have BitLocker enabled. Luckily, I can change them back. So on to the next hurdle....Hello... AD Team?
- Proposed as answer by BobCGRR Friday, August 02, 2013 2:28 PM
Hi All, have run into this issue today, right before shipping the system out.
Tried using the diskpart trick but with no luck.
I found some reg keys that finally unlocked the write protection.
At your own risk, try modifying the keys below (chg the "1" to a "0"):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
Not sure which key(s) fixed the problem but will have to monitor the system to see if they change back.
Good luck and Cheers!
Followup: GPO's changed these back to a value of "1" because I do not have BitLocker enabled. Luckily, I can change them back. So on to the next hurdle....Hello... AD Team?
- Proposed as answer by BobCGRR Friday, August 02, 2013 2:28 PM
Tom Bunn FOUND THE SOLUTION
unbelievable !!! After 6 hours , after looking nearly every where...Tom give me the RIGHT solution
Try diskpart on disk, on volume, fixmbr, change drive letter...the only SOLUTION is by modifying the key Tom give us
Oppps last things if the key do not exist (it was my case) please write those key...it will fix your troubble
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
Sorry for my english and thanks again to Tom
Cheers
I have the same on Window7, no luck with all the above solution.
on my registry key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies, I don't have the Microsoft\FVE
Any solution on this please?
I have the same on Window7, no luck with all the above solution.
on my registry key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies, I don't have the Microsoft\FVE
Any solution on this please?
I have the same thing as you khaoun and I add a small part to the first solution of Edwin vMierlo:
of course it works perfectly:
after finishing the command of Edwin vMierlo do the following:
- clean
- creat partition primary
- format fs=fat32 label="your disk name"
- and you will be happy! I think.
Moderator Edit: this will destroy your data
- Edited by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Tuesday, October 25, 2011 12:59 PM Warning added
I have the same thing as you khaoun and I add a small part to the first solution of Edwin vMierlo:
of course it works perfectly:
after finishing the command of Edwin vMierlo do the following:
- clean
- creat partition primary
- format fs=fat32 label="your disk name"
- and you will be happy! I think.
Moderator Edit: this will destroy your data
- Edited by Edwin vMierloMVP, Moderator Tuesday, October 25, 2011 12:59 PM Warning added
Hi All, have run into this issue today, right before shipping the system out.
Tried using the diskpart trick but with no luck.
I found some reg keys that finally unlocked the write protection.
At your own risk, try modifying the keys below (chg the "1" to a "0"):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000Not sure which key(s) fixed the problem but will have to monitor the system to see if they change back.
Good luck and Cheers!
Followup: GPO's changed these back to a value of "1" because I do not have BitLocker enabled. Luckily, I can change them back. So on to the next hurdle....Hello... AD Team?
Thanks Tom Bunn for discovering the solution to the problem.
I have the same problem like everyone else on a Win 2008 deployment. However, I'm yet to try out your solution. Will probably do so this weekend.
How did you enable the Bitlocker? Kindly share.
Thanks!
Dear Edwin vMierlo,
Thanks for your reslostion to The media write-protected.
its help to me ..
thanks & regards,
G Subbaraju
Tom Bunn FOUND THE SOLUTION
unbelievable !!! After 6 hours , after looking nearly every where...Tom give me the RIGHT solution
Try diskpart on disk, on volume, fixmbr, change drive letter...the only SOLUTION is by modifying the key Tom give us
Oppps last things if the key do not exist (it was my case) please write those key...it will fix your troubble
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Policies\Microsoft\FVE]
"FDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000
"RDVDenyWriteAccess"=dword:00000000Sorry for my english and thanks again to Tom
Cheers
The same here !
After deploying an image the D: was writable but after d: format, the volume was write protected.
Diskpart, update drivers, StorageDevicePolicies registry key, sfc /scannow ... all was useless.
The only way i found to be able to write again on D was to set up these keys.
Thank you
None of the above solutions didn't work for me although the symptoms were exactly the same. (My disk was on a ISCSI Target)
In my case the solution was to restart the ISCSI Target device. Simple as that - too bad it took me whole night of debugging before i tried that :)
Every time I type in "detail disk" diskpart stops working. I can never get past that command. please help.
Thanks,,
I have encounter the same issue and got it solved with the above solution.