External Hard Drive Occasionally Read Only

I have an HP a6750t desktop, running Vista Home Premium X64. I have a Western Digital external hard drive attached via USB which I use for backups. It works just fine most of the time. However occasionally when I try to backup to it, it is in read only status. Rebooting th PC clears the problem, but I am baffled by this intermittent problem. Any ideas as to what is wrong?

How do you definte "read only status" in this context? What is the result of trying to write files to the drive? An error message?

Does the drive itself or software which came with the drive offer some means of toggling read-only functionality?

I meaan that the drive cannot be written to. When I run a Quicken backup to this drive I get the message to select another drive as this drive is read only. I have tried to write to it by creating a new folder and get a message stating that the drive is read only (I don't remember the specific message text). There is no software with the drive for flipping back and forth from read only to write status. The only way I have found to clear the problem is to reboot the PC; that works every time. I can't say for sure, but it appears the drive occasionally comes up read only at boot time.

dnlarsen said:

I meaan that the drive cannot be written to. When I run a Quicken backup to this drive I get the message to select another drive as this drive is read only. I have tried to write to it by creating a new folder and get a message stating that the drive is read only (I don't remember the specific message text). There is no software with the drive for flipping back and forth from read only to write status. The only way I have found to clear the problem is to reboot the PC; that works every time. I can't say for sure, but it appears the drive occasionally comes up read only at boot time.

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When Quicken starts having problems writing to the drive, is every other means of writing to the drive similarly affected? In other words, what happens if you try to write to the drive using Windows Explorer? CMD.EXE? Internet Explorer (File | Save As...)? Notepad? ...

I have not tried all of the things you mentioned. But I tried creating a new folder the first time this problem occurred and I could not because the drive was not write accessible. I'll have to wait until it happens again to try different methods of writing to get you more information. It is very intermittent, so it may be a while. But my sense is that once this problem occurs the drive is truly read only and nothing will write to it. I'll confirm back when it happens again.

OK, the problem is happening right now. Quicken will not write to the external drive. I tried making a new folder with explorer, saving a file with notepad, copying a file using DOS in a command line window and running DOS mkdir. All failed with messages stating that the disk is write protected. So it appears that the disk is truly write protected. I am going to reboot after I post this message and see if the disk comes back write enabled and post the results.

Just rebooted system and drive is now write enabled again. Go figure!

Click on any file and see if you can change the permissions back.
Click on the attributes of the drive to see if you can change them back.
Right click on the drive and go to security, you may be able to change them this way.

I tried this the first time it happened and I couldn't fix the problem. It's been a while, so I don't remember much detail about what I did. I can try it again when the problem recurs. However I am the administrator on this computer and have full control, so why should I be getting this problem at all? Also even if I could set the proper permissions, it doesn't explain why this problem happens in the first place. Any ideas about that?

dnlarsen said:

I tried this the first time it happened and I couldn't fix the problem. It's been a while, so I don't remember much detail about what I did. I can try it again when the problem recurs. However I am the administrator on this computer and have full control, so why should I be getting this problem at all? Also even if I could set the proper permissions, it doesn't explain why this problem happens in the first place. Any ideas about that?

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As Roy said, it would be useful to know whether NTFS-level security descriptors (Access Control Lists - ACLs) are at all involved in this issue. Presumably not, since rebooting shouldn't by itself affect ACLs, and you don't appear to be seeing "access denied" messages as such, but it would still be useful to check.

I think the main question right now is whether this caused by software or hardware/firmware, and given you can't repro at will it may not be simple to judge one way or the other. If you have access to another computer, I'd suggest using the drive over there long enough to be confident whether the same issue is manifesting itself. If so, the drive/firmware is obviously the cause.

Otherwise, if the other computer is consistently able to write to this drive without issues, there's a software component to the problem and it's on your computer. I'm tempted to believe the anti-virus may potentially be involved, but that is a complete guess right now.

OK, I had this external drive attached to a Gateway 700X desktop running Windows XP Home since October, 2007. I never had any problem writing to the drive and I ran weekly drive image backups as well as backing up my Quicken files almost on a daily basis. I never had a problem and certainly never saw this read only issue occur. The problem only started happening when I moved the drive to my HP desktop which has Vista X64.

I'm sorry, I should have included this information in my initial problem description.

So this is kind of looking like a software issue I would say. Today I have not had the problem and have been able to backup files OK. Also I should mention I run Norton Ghost daily backups and a weekly backup. Most of the time these run fine. Although they run in the evening and I usually detect the problem earlier in the day and correct it.

I had the problem again yesterday, but was in a hurry to leave so I just rebooted to clear the problem. An observation: I have been searching around for similar problems and I see a lot of recommendations to change permissions and owners for a drive, but which apparently don't seem to address the problem.

Today the drive is write accessible. I went the properties-security-advanced-owner for this drive and found the owner listed as S-1-5-21-3895304184-3454122357-776746741-1003. What on earth is that? Is this because I originally had this drive installed on my XP machine? Is this relevant to my problem?

dnlarsen said:

I had the problem again yesterday, but was in a hurry to leave so I just rebooted to clear the problem. An observation: I have been searching around for similar problems and I see a lot of recommendations to change permissions and owners for a drive, but which apparently don't seem to address the problem.

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People troubleshoot in all sorts of, uh, curious ways. I wouldn't worry too much about what someone else did until/unless you've got very specific technical reasons to believe that their problem is the same.

dnlarsen said:

Today the drive is write accessible. I went the properties-security-advanced-owner for this drive and found the owner listed as S-1-5-21-3895304184-3454122357-776746741-1003. What on earth is that? Is this because I originally had this drive installed on my XP machine? Is this relevant to my problem?

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That's what's called a SID - a "security identifier". Everything but the "1003" at the end is the so-called domain or context... a unique identifier for an accounts database. That may indeed correspond to your XP machine if the drive was initially formatted there.

1003 (at the end) is the RID - "relative identifier". RIDs up to 1000 are built-in, in the sense that the accounts database already contains them as soon as the OS install is complete. RID=500 is the built-in administrator account for example. RIDs above 1000 are users that were added to the database subsequently, so in this case the "owner" is the 3rd non-default account (1003) created in the "S-1-5..." accounts database.

I doubt your issue has anything to do with permissions though. Permissions simply don't toggle like that, and if they did it would mean there's something wrong with the file system metadata on the disk. Try running CHKDSK /R if you haven't already done so.

I'll kid you not - this is not necessarily going to be easy to troubleshoot, unless you get a little lucky. If it is a software problem, it's going to be a filter driver. I'm tempted to blame the old stand-by: the anti-virus software. You might want to try uninstalling your AV utility for a few days to test whether it makes a difference, or using a completely different AV solution.

Thanks for the explanation. I am running chkdsk /r now. It'll take a while as it is a 500GB disk. I don't think the anitvirus software is an issue. I have been running Norton Antivirus for years on the XP machine where this drive was originally attached and it worked just fine. I am running Norton Antivirus on my Vista machine as well and have had no issues of any kind.

What on earth is a filter driver? And what would the problem be if it is this thing whatever it is? Assuming the chkdsk runs clean, what would be the next thing to look at?

dnlarsen said:

Thanks for the explanation. I am running chkdsk /r now. It'll take a while as it is a 500GB disk. I don't think the anitvirus software is an issue. I have been running Norton Antivirus for years on the XP machine where this drive was originally attached and it worked just fine. I am running Norton Antivirus on my Vista machine as well and have had no issues of any kind.

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I'd suggest not ruling out possible culprits too early. You're currently doing that in two ways:

- The fact that the drive used to work under XP is significant, but not conclusive. All hardware eventually breaks down, especially hardware with moving parts. Weeks or months or years ago the drive may have been OK, but by now it could have developed a fault. Hence, it would be useful to test it on another machine in the present. If it still fails to display any evidence of abnormality, then you can truly be reasonably certain the hardware is not at fault (it's not conclusive though!).

- The fact that a different extremely complex software mechanism (older versions of NAV) used to work without causing this issue when interfacing with another completely different and extremely complex software mechanism (Windows XP), pause for breath, doesn't prove anything in particular. Unfortunately, new bugs ("regressions") are routinely introduced in newer software versions, and both your AV and our OS have gone through many revisions since this all worked.

I have absolutely no proof that your hardware or your AV is in any way involved, but I'd hate to see you spend many hours looking in the wrong direction because something was discounted too early

dnlarsen said:

What on earth is a filter driver? And what would the problem be if it is this thing whatever it is? Assuming the chkdsk runs clean, what would be the next thing to look at?

Click to expand...

A "filter driver" is a software shim in between applications and the resource they are trying to access. For example, without a filter driver, a (very) simplifed relationship might look like this:

[application] <---> [OS] <---> [disk]

In other words, the app makes a read/write request and the OS accesses the disk and does the app's bidding. Now if you were, say, an anti-virus utility, you'd want to be inspecting all file activity to check for infections. In terms of architecture, the way you'd do that is by inserting a filter driver into the path:

[application] <---> [OS] <---> [FILTER DRIVER] <---> [disk]

The filter driver (FD) then "sees" all attempts to interact with the disk. At its sole discretion, a FD can completely ignore a request and pass it along in its original format, it can modify the request in whatever way it sees fit, or it can unceremoniously delete the request thereby denying the app. Obviously, a FD is in a powerful position, and indeed many parts of the OS itself are implemented as FDs.

Since all apps seem to be equally affected and at the same time too, if this is a software problem it will likely come down to corruption of the OS - or a 3rd-party FD which has a bug that sometimes manifests itself as unintentional denial of write requests. That's why I'm suggesting you try to simplify the configuration temporarily and remove as many security and "inspection" utilities as possible. If it happens even once with your AV completely out of the picture, obviously the AV is not involved. Same with any anti-malware or non-default firewall utilities on there.

OK, let's cut to the chase here. I continue to have problem with my external Western Digital hard drive falling into read only status randomly since I reported it two years ago (see first post - it's mine). No it's not an antivirus problem, it's not any kind of a configuration problem from what I can see. This has been going on for years and has been reported by many, many users and I now see the same problem being reported multiple times for Windows 7. This is a Windows bug and it's time Microsoft stepped up and fixed it. You have had innumerable reports of the problem, including hardware and software configurations and, I'm sure, the results of a multitude of troubleshooting steps that Microsoft has had us users following for the last two years at least. You have all the information you need and it's up to you to fix it.

Sorry if I sound a little frustrated, but I think two years and a huge number of problem reports of the same problem should have resulted in a fix by now. Just google the problem description and you will see that problem has been out there for a long time and afflicting many people.

Hi dnlarsen,

Please keep in mind that we are not Microsoft nor are we even affiliated with Microsoft. We have no control over what they do or do not fix in Vista or any of their other products. We essentially have no more access to the people who could do something than you do. We've tried many solutions, but haven't succeeded in finding a single, always-works solution that applies in every circumstance (though I have seen some successful resolutions even if they could not explain how or why what they did worked - and typically it could not be reproduced by others doing exactly the same thing). Unfortunately, we here do not have all the information we need to come up with a fix (or we most certainly would have by now) - there is much that Microsoft does not make available to the public (and we too are the public). We do the best we can with what's made available to us.

I know you've tried this before, but I would go to to root of the drive and right click on properties and then security and add your username with full rights (perhaps the Administrator group as well). Then click on Advanced and do the same thing in Special Permissions (being sure to check the box to apply to all sub-directories and files). Then click on the Ownership Tab and change the owner to your username from whatever it is currently (no matter what it is).

I assume the drive is formatted as NTFS - if not, I recommend you convert it to NTFS as that is a better and more stable system.

We should test the drive beyond a simple chkdsk. To test your hard drive, check the manufacturer and try HD Diagnostic (http://www.carrona.org/hddiag.html) or this test: Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp (http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287).

I suggest you find another Vista machine and check the drive on that computer. It may take a while as the problem is intermittent. The key here is to see if the problem is with the drive or with the computer - that is very important to confirm somehow. Yes, I recognize the difficulties in this suggestion in terms of losing the drive for a long period and possibly allowing others access to the information on it (unless you can somehow clear it and format it and reset the permissions and ownership and then let those with the other computer use it as you do to see if the problem persists or disappears). How often does it occur these days?

And yes, I suspect you've heard all this before and probably tried it all before (I see some of it above suggested but not always whether you did it or how it turned out - though obviously if you tried it, it didn't work as you're posting now) and none of it has helped (or any other research you've done). I'm sorry, but I have pretty much nothing else to suggest that isn't drastic (like doing a clean install of the computer and formatting and reconfiguring the drive with the above-recommended security settings).

I hope this helps. If not, post back and perhaps someone else will have another idea to suggest.

Good luck!

My apologies for beating up on you in Vista Forums. I guess I thought you were or were associated with Microsoft. I changed the permissions as you asked. I finally got my user name added into the list of entities and have given it full control. Also the categories of SYSTEM, Administrators and Users all have full control.

As far as running diagnostics, I am reluctant to do that, but can if you insist. I feel that since there are so many reporting this same problem in both Vista and 7 environments, it is unlikely that it is a hardware issue, but seems very likely to be a Windows issue.

I assume this problem has been reported to Microsoft since so many have been having it. Are you in a position to know if that is so and if it is being looked at or ignored?

In the meantime I will await a repeat of the problem. It happens quite randomly and every few days or so. I'll repost when it comes back or if I go a very long time without a recurrence.

Hi dnlarsen,

Don't worry about it - you didn't know (and you're not the first nor will you be the last to blame us for Microsoft's problems). Did you also change the Ownership as suggested (along with the permissions you did change) and make sure to check the box to apply it to all sub-directories and files)?

I have no way of knowing if they are looking at this problem or not. The fact that you say it exists in W7 as well is a good sign (as they continue to work actively on that), but I have no idea if they are working on this particular issue or how to learn if they are - I don't have those kinds of connections. As I said, I'm very little different from you in knowing what Microsoft is or isn't doing in terms of fixes or enhancements or, in fact, almost anything. We are a completely separate and private site and we are all volunteers and not connected at all with Microsoft (though some my have certifications or awards and others may participate in beta testing programs and other things - but that really gives us little if any additional access to information like you're seeking). I will say that in the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively minor problem and if it's even on their list, it's probably quite close to the bottom (unless the problem is caused by something significant - but I don't know that and I haven't seen anything indicating anyone does).

To be honest, even if they are working on it, it will probably be to repair W7 if it is an issue there and, if by chance it's the very same issue with Vista, they might fix Vista at the same time - but they almost certainly are not directly working on Vista enhancements or fixes other than security issues or major problems that cause new Microsoft product upgrades not to work or things of that magnitude. I don't even know how to report a Vista problem/bug anymore (the website where we did it a year or two ago is no longer available as I just tried to go there to report it just in case it wasn't).

It's OK not to do the drive checks - it's your computer/drive and entirely your decision. Chances are you are right and it isn't the problem - I'm just trying to be thorough. I don't think they will cause harm, but if you're uncomfortable, then by all means avoid them as the drive appears to generally be working. Remember, we don't "insist" on anything - we merely offer suggestions which you can take or ignore as you choose.

I honestly suspect it has to do with permissions and ownership, but I cannot figure out why it continues to revert to prior settings once they are fixed (or, for that matter, why rebooting helps as that suggests something is changing in the configuration while the system is operating but is reset with a reboot and that suggests some sort of program (maybe!) is doing it but I do not have a clue which one - I couldn't make what's happening occur if everything was OK even if I wanted to). In a way, I wish it happened more often so we could better diagnose - but then again, I'm happy it isn't happening to you all that often and do not "wish" that on you.

If you haven't done so recently, check to see if there are any updated drivers or firmware available from the drive manufacturer's website and see if updating helps (it shouldn't hurt if obtained from the manufacturer and probably is a good idea anyway).

Since you didn't mention it, I assume you don't have another computer to which you can attach the drive and see if the problem persists - it would help to confirm that it has something to do with the computer. Normally I would suggest a clean boot or working in safe mode to see if that makes any difference, but it occurs too infrequently to suggest you stay in those modes long enough to test the theory.

What security software are you using (name and version of any and all)? It is possible that the program is resetting security on the drive with some automatic process that only periodically operates - whether intentionally or unintentionally. Possibly a change to Microsoft Security Essentials (with periodic scans by Malwarebytes) - both free but excellent and recommended by many here as the best choice - may resolve the problem (but that's just a wild guess based on no verified facts - I just know that I use them and do not have this problem and we often recommend it when facing problems of this type - meaning, what seems to be security-related - to see if it helps). If willing to consider this, post back and I'll provide links to remove whatever you currently have (you shouldn't just uninstall AV software like you do other types as this often causes problems later) and where to get the products I've recommended.

Finally, check your computer manufacturer's website and see if there is a BIOS update for your specific computer and version of Vista (there are many and the wrong one can do great harm, so be absolutely, positively certain the update is for YOUR system with that operating system before doing this). Again, this is something of a wild shot, but it is a possibility and may be worth a shot (and like the drivers, it's usually a good idea to be using the most recent version for a number of reasons).

To be honest, I hope the problem doesn't return and the permission changes "fixed" it - but I somehow can't bring myself to believe that will turn out to be the case (as much as I wish it to be true). But I could be wrong and I'll be very happy to be wrong about this.

I wish I had more to offer, but I simply don't - at least nothing that you wouldn't consider too drastic if doing a hard drive diagnostic test makes you uncomfortable.

I hope this helps.

Good luck!

Well, interesting news to report. My Western Digital Mybook drive, which I was having the problems with, started powering down unexpectedly. It eventually got to the point where it just would not stay up for very long at a time. I replaced it with an Iomega 2TB external drive on 2/5/11 and since doing that, I have had no problems with the drive randomly going into write protect mode. Now it may be too early to conclude the problem is gone, but it's looking good. So it may have been a hardware problem after all. I didn't think so because I have seen so many posts from others having the same problem. It does seem, if I recall correctly, Western Digital was involved a lot. Maybe there's something there. Anyway, I will not close this problem as fixed yet, but I will post an update after more time has passed. I hope this is behind me.

It has been two months since I replaced my Western Digital drive with an IOMEGA 2TB external drive. To date I have not experienced the problem of the drive dropping into read only (write protect) mode. I have to conclude that the problem was related to the WD drive. It doesn't explain why I never saw the problem with XP, but I am satisfied that the problem is fixed. So I am closing this problem as resolved.