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General discussion

Remove Write Protection on Encrypted Hard Drive

Dec 28, 2008 11:41PM PST

I bought this hard drive on Boxing Day http://tinyurl.com/9zv8ux and I have used True Crypt to make two containers on the drive. One 200GB and one 265GB.

I moved some stuff over from my notebook to free up space and everything went fine. The next day however, I tried to write to it and it said it was write protected. I have no idea how that happened.

I've looked around for a solution and nothing has helped.

I'm running Vista Business 32 bit if that helps any, thanks.

Discussion is locked

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For me...
Dec 28, 2008 11:51PM PST

I remove all the partitions, create a new one, format the drive and then I regain its use.

You didn't tell if you needed to save files.
Bob

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Reply
Dec 29, 2008 5:30AM PST

"You didn't tell if you needed to save files."

Sorry? I'm new to this forum stuff, but I'll give your suggestion a go and update.

I moved about 30 gigs of files off my notebook to my My Book, so yes I need to store files.

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"yes I need to store files."
Dec 29, 2008 5:35AM PST

While I will always warn people they only lose what they don't backup and external drives make for iffy "storage", the method I noted so far should regain use of the drive and let you store copies of your files there.

If you need to recover data, this won't do that. And you didn't ask for that.
Bob

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Fix for Read only error in Vista!
Jan 10, 2009 5:19PM PST

Hi. I'm running Windows Vista 64-bit ultimate asnd I have the exact same problem. It will randomly write protect any one of the 5 installed hard drives as it sees fit to do so.

I spent ages scanning the web to find a solution, most people say delete partition then re-partition then re-format etc etc, this is all well and good but if this is happening on a reguilar basis to keep moving 240 or so gig from one hdd to another is both time consuming and realy annoying.

Anyway, I have found a solution to this problem. For me it works every time on and hdd without loss of data and spengina ages tranfering data. Although, obviously, make sure you back-up your data just in case.

Do this:
go into command prompt
then type "diskpart"
type "list volume"
then "select volume xxx" (where xxx is the write protected problem drive)
then type "attributes volume clear readonly"

Then exit command.
Then try to write to the drive. All should be well.
This only didn't work for me once, when I did it again it worked fine, so I figured I must have made a typing error.

I thought I'd post this to help anyone out. It is a really frustrating glitch in windows that should be addressed urgently. Before I found this fix, I must had copied data, removed partitions, re-done partitions then re-formatted at least a dozen times. Hopefully this helps, please let me know.

Jace@CamaroRS.co.uk

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Thank you!
Feb 17, 2011 4:45AM PST

Thank you so much - this worked for me!

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Sweet
Nov 27, 2011 10:35PM PST

I've been searching the internet for a way to do this for a week now... this is the only one I could find that would work! THANKS A LOT!

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Problem Solved
Jan 16, 2009 11:26AM PST

I tried your suggestion and it has worked fine so far! Happy Thank you.

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What would happen if you lost all the data on the external ?
Jan 11, 2009 2:07AM PST

Sounds like you have data in one location or another and NO BACKUP whatsoever...is that correct ?

VAPCMD