My drive is in read only

WD External and Portable SSD Portable SSD
1

My drive is in read only. I have never had the chance to put anything on it. How do I fix this issue?

2

Hi,

You could refer to the following link: Instructions to Format a Drive for Use with Windows or macOS

3

It’s easy to format a write-protected disk with CMD:
diskpart
list disk
select disk n (the n is your disk number)
attributes disk clear readonly: to remove its write protection properties.
exit
Then, the WD drive is back to normal, on longer write-protected.

OR

Change the registry key with the following steps:

  1. Press Wind + R to open the Run dialogue. Type regedit and select to open the Registry Editor.
  2. Expand the entries on the left-hand pane to navigate to the following path:
    Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
  3. Right click WriteProtect and modify the value data from 1 to 0. Then, click “OK”.

Note: it’s highly recommended to create WD external hard drive auto backup to secure your data after put something in it just in case write-proteced again somehow, or virus attack, etc.

1 Like
4

Hi, have gotten the read-only issue solved? If clearing read only attribute from the drive, and changing the registry key do not work, it might be something about the damaged file system of the WD hard drive. In this case, you can format the write-protected disk directly via a free partition manager. Hope it helps!