USB hard drive is write protected and will not run backup

[Psykiller]

I have recently upgraded my system by installing Windows 7 on it which was Vista earlier. I have formatted the Maxtor Plus hard drive and finished with the backup. But the problem is that i am not able to use that backup as i am getting the message as Backup Failed because Disk is write protected. Even i am not able to take an ownership of this disk as it is write protected. How can i change an ownership from 35 digit to an admin?

[Curt]

In order to clear the write protection settings from your external driver you have to make some changes in the registry of your windows 7 operating system. I just know that the change has be made in StorageDevicePolicies which is regarding the write protection. You have to change the value of this registry from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0.

[Pugsly]

I have given you the method below by using which you can remove the write protection from your external hard drive.

1. Go to the Start Menu and type regedit on the RUN search bar.
2. Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies. If it does not exists then you have create it manually.
3. Double click on the key WriteProtect in the right window for which you have to set the value as 0.
4. Press OK and reboot your system.

[Regina]

Some times it happens that when you try to change the value of the Registry on your windows operating system but then you find that there is no such registry existing on your system for which you have to create it manually. You can do it by going trough the following steps.

• Start the Registry Editor
• Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control key
• Right click on it and select New -> Key.
• Then go to the Menu -> Edit -> New -> DWORD Value
• Name the value as WriteProtect and right click on its value foe modify it.
• Enter 0 in the Value Data.
• Reboot your system.

[Simond]

This kind of problem can also persists due to the two Windows registry entries that have become corrupted. You have to use the Registry Editor in order to remove the corrupted registry entries. But i suggest you to be careful while modifying the Registry as if it gets modify wrongly then any serious problem can occur. So you better back up your registry before.