WD external HD write protected

I just did a very stupid thing.... =/

My external HD was write protected for some odd reason, but when I checked the security settings, everything had write allowed. So I try to do a reset by unchecking write and then checking it again, but now I cannot check write again because I do not have permission to write (unchecked write allow box for SYSTEM and Admin). Is there a registry fix for this or a way around this? I am running Vista 64-bits. I tried a system restore, but that didn't help. I currently have no permissions to change anything on the drive which is very stupid -.-. Anyone know if formatting the drive will reset everything to the default settings?

 

Well, formatting the drive will WIPE IT CLEAN - i.e. you loose all and any data on it.

It should solve your problem though...

On another note, have you just restarted?
If I had a folder that I couldn't delete this sometimes worked - a case of some process not closing properly.

 

If wiping my drive will fix it, then I guess that I will do that heh. I was afraid that I would waste my time formatting a drive with 400 Gb of anime =/. I'll need to find a way to somehow back them up though.

 

Well - I suggest waiting for more resposnses before you do.

Have you got another computer you can try the drive on?

Did this drive "migrate" from XP to Vista?

 

I recently swapped hard drive because my old one had a lot of bad sectors so ever since I swapped, my external HD got write protected. This happened twice actually. After I did the hard drive swapped, the new hard drive used an image to restore my laptop back to its factory settings and somehow unchecked my write allow box so all I had to do to fix it the first time was to recheck it. Afterward, I went a restore my HD and repartition it to an image that I backup. After doing this, my external HD was write protected once again, but this time the write allow box was checked, which was very strange. I thought that maybe unchecking it and then apply and recheck it would fix it. However, I can never check it again since I lost permissions to. This is on a Vista OS. Even Administrator has no permission to change anything =/. I was hoping that there would be something like a registry hack to fix this.

 

...UAC turned on or off?

 

UAC is turned off

 

Per se a bad idea, but I asked because it is theoretically possible that UAC intereferes with drives from other computers.

This isn't the case for you though if you have it turned off - blank here

(PS: Search the forum why its bad to turn UAC off - then reconsider please )

 

The confirmation window is really annoying so I just turned it off. Besides this may be the only time that I will actually regret turning off UAC.

 

There is far more to it than just the little window - it has been discussed at lenght here on NBR, that's why I said search for it

Now your tunrnig it off doesn't cause this problem.

Its the other way round - if UAC is on an external drive from another computer can cause poblems but doesn't have to.

 

Actually, I think this was the case. On my old HD, UAC was turned off and my external was working fine. When I got my new one from Dell. The HD came with the partitions with the factory settings which had UAC turned on. That might have explained the reason why when I plugged my external into my laptop with UAC turned on, I get the write protected error. This was easily fixed. When I decided to restore a backup image that I made with UAC turned off, my external has the write protected error again, but this time it was not fixable. =/