Cannot write to drive "Media is write protected"

Hi all,

This seems to be a new development, and I'm stumped. I've got three
internal hard drives- one housing Vista Ultimate x64, one housing Ubuntu
8.04 x64, and one being used for storage for both OS's. Up until
recently they've cooperated nicely. Now, the storage drive (drive E:\)
will not let me write to it. I cannot rename, delete, cut, or write any
new files to any part of that drive. That's troublesome, since that's
where I send all of my downloads to! Even earlier in this session of
windows it was working nicely, I was able to download a torrent of the
recent Ubuntu 8.04 release (legal and distributed from ubuntu.com). I
started a session of Assassin's Creed (a game), and now that I've quit
that, I cannot write to the drive. Specifically, the error is:

"The disk is write protected. Remove the write protection or use
another disk."

I've tried changing the security settings to allow USERS, or even just
Administrators, full control of the drive, to no avail. I cannot modify
the security settings. When I try, I get:

"An error occurred while applying security information to

E:\xyzpath\123filename

The media is write protected."

I can assure you that I've not enabled any type of write protection.
Any ideas? I'd really like to have this working again as otherwise I'm
extremely limited on storage space. Thanks in advance!

Hi again. Sorry to post a question and then answer it myself, but I saw
the question come up in a few other places and thought I'd post the
solution I found here, in case anyone else came looking. Checkdisk did
not do the trick. I had to use Diskpart.

From a cmd prompt, I ran "diskpart". I selected the drive, and then
the volume, then ran "Attributes volume clear readonly". Immediately I
was able to set security permissions and am currently downloading my new
Ubuntu disc at 900kb/s. :D

Note: I have not yet rebooted, so I'm not sure if this solution will
persist, or if the problem will randomly occur again. I am using SP1
also, in case anyone is interested.

Hi all. In case anyone was curious, it DID happen again, totally at
random. Not sure what's causing it, but the same fix as before worked
again.

Same deal here. Starting to bother me big time. I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04
release but didn't do anything with it? Just the ISO.

I'm also having this problem. I have a partition on my hard drive that I
can no longer set permissions for. How do I fix this?

[evano]

I'm not sure if this will help, but I found this thread while I was searching for a solution to the "write-protected" issue, and now that it seems to be fixed I figured I'd let you know how I worked it out.

The drive that gave me the message was a USB 500Gb external which I moved from my old XP box when I installed Vista HPx64 on a brand new machine. After a lot of Googling, I tried the diskpart method bogus83 suggested. It seemed to work, but just a couple of seconds later, my antivirus (Avira AntiVir -- free and excellent) popped up a warning that it had found a boot sector virus in that drive called Sinowal.A. I told it to delete the virus, but it couldn't and that's when the AV program write-protected the drive. Aha!

I tried to get rid of the virus by following the instructions at this Microsoft site and it probably would have worked except that those tools only fix the MBR on the system drive which has Vista -- not on any other drives. Then I found this tool, MBRFix which is a 98Kb file that runs from the command line. So here's how I did it:

• Download MBRFix.exe to your User folder
• Boot the computer into a fresh session
• Go to Start | All Programs | Accessories
• Right-click on Command Prompt
• Choose "Run as administrator"
• Choose "Allow" from the UAC popup box (if you haven't turned it off)
• At the C:\Users\{your name}\> prompt, type
  MBRFix /drive {drive number} fixmbr /yes
• Repeat the command for however many drives are infected/write protected
• Restart and check your antivirus or see if you are still unable to write to the drive

If it was the virus, you should allow your anti-virus program and a good spyware program or two to run through a full system scan. It's been a couple of days, and (fingers crossed) it seems to be fixed! Hope this helps someone.

Hi, same problem here...
I performed the "diskpart" solution from bogus83, but after the
restart, grub did not get past stage 1.5 (seems to be in a loop, as no
error message).

Anyone an idea of what has gone wrong? I did run a virus-check (Norton
360) before restarting, and no problems were found.

My configuration is:

Ubuntu 8.04 on 250GB Maxtor (grub installed here)
Vista Ultimate X64 on (Software) Raid 0 (2 x WD Raptor 37GB)
Asus P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi
Intel E6600

I (think) I have solved my issue:
after having restored my MBR using the Vista DVD, I updated the jmicron
(SATA/RAID controller drivers), and so far have not seen the problem
return.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that was the cause...

Hi,

for me the problem reappeared a few days after I had updated my
SATA/RAID controller drivers. So that wasn't it. Instead I connected the
drive onto a different SATA controller (that was about a week ago), and
it* seems *as if that has solved it for me. No idea why, though...

Thanks to "bogus83" for sharing the solution using diskpart.
Worked like a charm.

On my Vista x64 machine the problem occured after I tried to copy all files
from a drive named "Medien 1" to a folder, also named "Medien 1", on a
different drive. I received an error, telling me something along the lines of
"the target folder is a subfolder of the source folder".
After shaking my head in resignation I renamed the target folder and tried
again. Seeing that the process would take longer than expected, I canceled
the operation, leaving the task for the following day. When I started my
computer the next day to try again, I received the mentioned error message.

Coincidence? Maybe. Annoying? Definitely!

I have similar issue. 2 harddrives, Vista 64 is on 2nd, Windows XP on 1st.
And No any RAID, also updated drivers.
Nothing helps - it occurs time ti time, and reboot always helps.
I searched with google, it turned out that many people complain about it and
they all have different configuration, so there is no any pattern (except 2
or more HDs). So it is Vista bug and any remedy is temporary until MS fix
it...

I was having this same issue when I was using Windows XP x64 and I'm
having it now with Windows Vista Ultimate x64. I have six internal hard
drives and seven external hard drives and it seems like in my testing
that the last one or two drives that show up in the OS are the ones that
invariably come up write-protected. I'm pretty sure its a 64-bit bug.
Does anyone have a solution yet? I'm seriously considering writing a
script to run on login that will automatically remove the write
protection. This is driving me insane not to mention causing me to have
to unplug and replug my drives unnecessarily to get them usable again.
Is Microsoft listening? Hello, is this thin on?

If you have drives that are encrypted with PGP and the show up
write-protected; don't try the diskpart trick. it'll only make the
drive completely unmountable. I found that out the hard way; was able
to recover the data but it cost me two days of decryption.

That's very interesting. It almost seems like this is occurring
randomly to many different people with different configurations. All of
my drives that are hitting this were partitioned and formatted in
Windows XP and are external. The only drive I have that was created by
Vista is the drive Vista is installed on; all the rest are leftovers
from my XP x64 days, which of course had exactly the same problem. I
really hope they fix this soon; its so frustrating not being able to use
one or two (and yesterday is was three) hard drives because they are
showing write-protected after every single reboot and not being able to
encrypt the data on the drive for fear of losing it at the next reboot.

Thanks, Johan, I'll give this a try and see what happens. I hope
something works as this is driving me nuts.

YIKES!! I think you might have found the solution, Johan. It took me a
good five hours to reset the security on all my files but I've rebooted
three times now and still no read-only drives. I still want to get a
few more reboots in before I get to optimistic but so far things look
great!!!!

Now Vista seems to be write protecting the media on whims. I haven't
rebooted in four days and a drive that was fine yesterday is now
write-protected. What a pain in the ass.

MICROSOFT ARE YOU THERE!?!?!?! HELLLLLLLO THIS IS A PROBLEM, PLEASE
FIX IT!

I have exact same problem with Vista x64 Ultimate but it only occurs in
those hard disk partitions wich i have partitioned with vistas own disk
management, my other hard disk is partittioned with winxp disk management and
does not have that problem.

I'm getting the same issue with an internal HD that I use for data
storage. There must be some kind of definitive fix for this. :(

Same problem here, caused by changing SATA ports....or what is it
something else?!

[Johan ALfort]

Basicly what I did with my 3 external drives was to go to:

This computer
Locate the drive
Right click - Properties
Security
In the lower right, choose Advanced
Lower Left, choose Edit

Now here was my problem. Having put the files there on one computer that crashed alot then moving it to my new computer, I had some weird owerships and inheritatits from the old computer. What I basicly did, was to remove ALL of the permissions then adding <My user name> and, System, and Administrator. You can also add Users and Authenticated Users (look up the names on your main drive that always works).

It took a while for the disk to set the permissions to all folders/subfolders and so on, but now everything works like a charm. Could be worth a try.

PS. Also works after reboot :)

Well, so it still writes protects the disc sometimes, but unlike before I find that now all I need to do is unplug the power so the harddrive "reboots" and then it works again. It's atleast better than before but it's still not 100%
Also, the time it writes protects is after and only after a computer crash. Might infact be the drive itself that writeprotects itself if it notice a system failure, in that case...thats good news :)

Hope this works for you also psychosmurf!

I've reinstalled and I've fixed drivers and all so the system is more stable and so far I haven't had any problems with the disks for months now.

Sorry to say that I don't have any more suggetions. Do you have admin account and all that? If yes then I don't know what it is. This seems to be more than one problem and it doesn't seem like anyone out there is listening to it.

I hope you guys find solutions for the problem. You should talk to the manufacturers of the harddrives and see if you can get it replaced cause in my opinion this is not a working harddrive.

Good luck out there, If I stumble upon something, I'll post it here!

I have the same hell of a problem and wanted to try your approach
Johan. But I actually can't because when I try to click "OK" or "Apply"
after removing the old and adding the new permission entries it starts
but immediatelly gets this error:
"An error occurred while applying security information to:
Z:\PATH\TO\SOME\FILE\_\I\THINK\FIRST\ONE
The media is write protected."

So it looks like I have to possibility at all to change my permissions.
Perhaps it works under XP on my Laptop to unset the write-protection.
Or any other suggestions?! :(

@Johan ALfort: thanks for your attention and suggestions but I don't
think that this is a problem of the hard disks themselves but a drivers
or windows vista problem... And yeah, I have admin account but the
problem seams to be some kind of deadlock or so... weirdo stuff?!

I just can approve to what mpcrsc562 describes:
the hard drives I use are protected by truecrypt so I have to mount
them by select a drive in truecrypt and then type in my password... so,
the (not really) funny thing is now: sometimes a drive is write
protected and I can't change the properties of the disk to make it
writeable and sometimes it just works very well and I can create, modify
and delete files...

i have had this problem for some time now as well. i have an 80G hard
drive that was removed from a notebook and the hard drive was installed
in an enclosure. i would use the drive between two computers, sometimes
three: 1 vista home premium x64, 1 vista home premium x86, and 1 vista
business (mostly between the two vista home premium computers, as both
of those are mine). anyway, the hard drive would work with the notebook
(x86) and when i would attach it to the desktop (x64) i would get the
write protected error. i got it to work before by right clicking the
drive icon in my computer and going to the security tab. i would then
enable the permissions. then it would work fine.

strange thing happened this morning though--when i went to enable
permissions (because lo and behold, i got the write protection error
again this morning!), all of the permissions were enabled. so, i went to
device manager, selected the disk, and uninstalled it. after
uninstalling it, i detached the drive from my computer, waited a few
seconds, then reattached the drive. the computer had to reinstall the
driver software and everything worked fine--i was able to delete from
and copy to the drive with no problem.

i just hope that it stays right.

Hi, I have the same problem.
Suddenly, unable to create files or directories on my data-disk that's
in RAID 1.
Security-settings were OK but I even couldn't make changes to the
security-settings :confused:.
The only thing that changed since yesterday : a windows update that was
pending for more then a week.
So I did a system restore to yesterday and now the disk is writable
again.
I'm not sure which update causes this problem, but I will give you the
list of updates that were installed yesterday :

Today, I installed the pending updates again to see that they where the
cause of the problem.
But now seems everything OK..
Guess it wasn't an automatic update ..

Okay, My drive was locked again.. So I start digging the web for
solutions and causes..
I've found a solution and maybe a cause.. :)

Someone who's using 2008 enterprise terminal server, had the same
problem.

With the program diskpart.exe, you have to reset the read-only flag of
your disk or volume. In my case, it was the volume that was flagged
read-only. The detail-list gave no indication that it was flagged
read-only, but executing the command for resetting it, solved the
problem.

The cause of all this troubles could be some backup-software that locks
the harddrive.
I'm using Acronis True Image 11. Anyone else does?

[JimmiG]

Hi all. I found this thread thanks to Google. I've got two internal harddrives, one 640GB WD SE16 (C:) and one 500GB Samsung T166 (D:). They're hooked up the AMD SB600 southbridge and I've got the AMD AHCI driver version 3.1.1540.11. I've also got an external 500GB drive that I only connect when performing backups or restoring data.

I was running XP 32-bit, then Vista 32-bit without issues. After having switched to Vista 64-bit, my D drive will now randomly become write protected. All the fixes I've tried so far only have a temporary effect. The disk always eventually write protects itself again, sometimes within minutes, sometimes after several days. This is crazy!

I don't know if this is a bug with Vista 64-bit or if the actual upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit caused the issue. I've done the ownership thing, the MBRFix, the diskpart bit etc. I've also checked for viruses.

I think I've fixed the problem.
I tried all the AMD AHCI drivers I could find: 2.5.1540.35 and .39 (latest Asus driver I believe) both fail to keep the drive write enabled, as does 3.1.1540.11 (SB7xx driver). Version 2.5.1540.43, which for some reason is the latest SB600 driver available at AMD's own homepage also fails. I did not try 3.1.1540.50 which is the latest SB7xx driver, since it's not really meant for my SB600 southbridge.

However build 2.5.1540.48 available from the MSI K9A2 download page seem to work. After installing them and rebooting, neither harddrive has showed up as "Read Only" for days. I've got an Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe mobo, but the AHCI driver works with any brand.

So in my case it wasn't a security or permissions problem, but rather an AHCI driver problem. It seems most 64-bit versions of AMD's AHCI drivers fool Vista into thinking the harddrive is physically write protected. So if you've got an AMD board and experience this problem, there's a possible solution.