Strange 'Write-Protection' on Windows...
Archives Forums/Win32 Discussion/Strange 'Write-Protection' on Windows...
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| I have an USB harddrive which contains all my BlitzMax Projects, and also work I need for things not BMAx related. The thing is, all out of the blue Windows claims this device to be write protected. Meaning I cannot modify anything on it in Windows. Now the odd thing is, I also use this device on Linux and MacOS X and on those two platforms I can just write on it without any issues at all. To make it even odder I've also used this device in Virtual Box with Windows as guest OS (and Linux as host OS) and no issues then either. I've been trying to get any documentation on how I can get this protection removed as I do also need to use this thing in 'pure' windows (compiling my stuff in a VM is all cool, but I also need to run tests and then I prefer 'pure' Windows), but nothing really valuable popped up in my searches. Do you guys have any clues on this? (BTW, it's ExFAT formatted). |
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| At a guess, I imagine it may be due to the device being in use by some process or other. Run a good, full virus/malware check! |
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| Possible solution here? http://roblomtech.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-fix-exfat-drive-being-write.html ETA: Possibly this might help also. http://www.flashdrive-repair.com/2013/11/8-ways-to-fix-write-protected-usb-flash-drive-and-memory-card.html |
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| Run CHKDSK, to verify the integrity of the Fat partition tables? |
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| Maybe the ExFAT is the culprit? You can write to it on VM because it's virtualized, so it's actually using the underlying OS to write. Maybe your version of Windows (you didn't mention what are you using - XP or WinServer 2003 may be the culprit!) doesn't properly support ExFAT. Other than that - if your drive was not formatted on Windows, you may experience problems, since ExFAT is not an open standart, and implementations on MacOS and Linux fronts are far from perfect. |
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| Maybe the ExFAT is the culprit? I was wondering about that myself.... You can write to it on VM because it's virtualized, so it's actually using the underlying OS to write. Maybe your version of Windows (you didn't mention what are you using - XP or WinServer 2003 may be the culprit!) doesn't properly support ExFAT. Windows Vista. This was actually tried on two different computers, my wife's and the one on my work. Other than that - if your drive was not formatted on Windows, you may experience problems, since ExFAT is not an open standart, and implementations on MacOS and Linux fronts are far from perfect. Possibly. It was formatted in Mountain Lion (Mac). Point is Windows has always accepted it just fine, but all out of the blue it didn't.... :-/ |
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| From what I gather while browsing information, on USB drives Windows will set a write protect flag on the drive immediately before writing to the drive and clear the flag once it is done. If the writing is interrupted, say due to a power surge or the drive is accidentally removed without being properly unmounted, then the write protect flag remains set, this way you will not further damage files with subsequent writes. You should be able to use chkdsk /F to fix the drive. Failing that, you could always copy the files to HD, reformat the USB drive, then copy the files back. |
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| Now there's something that makes sense as my computer did have an sudden shutout in Linux due to a short malfunctioning in my power network. Due the the cashing that Linux uses, it's very likely it was emptying its writing cash when that happened and makes Windows act this way. Failing that, you could always copy the files to HD, reformat the USB drive, then copy the files back. That possibility already crossed my mind as I also needed this device on machines that don't support ExFAT at all. But a as the device is 1TB I chose ExFAT as FAT32 is not really a good way to go with 1TB. Of course I could still go for chopping the device up in multiple partitions.... |
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| Another option is NTFS, but MacOS can't write to NTFS partitions :( |
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| And that is why I would never choose NTFS. Once my broken iMac is replaced MacOS is gonna be my main system again (and I'll be happy to kiss Linux goodbye), so that is why NTFS is not an option. Thanks for the suggestion anyway. And oddly enough as suddenly the write-protection appeared, as suddenly it disappeared. I plugged the device in Linux to update some files (and to place a backup on my temp dir in case I had to reformat everything) and I plugged it into Windows. I just tried to write a file onto it with the "copy con test.txt" command, and everything worked. To make sure I did do a 'chkdsk/f' on it and a lot of corruptions were found. No idea if they did the evil, but as the problem appears to be solved... Why complain? Thanks everybody for your comments. I'll keep this thread as a reference if the problem ever occurs again. |
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| Another option is NTFS, but MacOS can't write to NTFS partitions There's a bunch of 3rd party drivers available that will allow you to read/write NTFS partitions. |
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| Sounds interesting.... Are they really reliable? If so I might be interested when I can go back to MacOS again... Well for the time being, I'll stick to ExFAT but I'll keep this in mind. |
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| Sounds interesting.... Are they really reliable? Seems to be... A few people I know use 'Tuxera NTFS for Mac'... Not free though, It's 25 euro / $31 for a license. |
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| Me Dutch.... So I count in euros.... :) €25 doesn't sound that expensive, so I might consider it. Thank you ;) |
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