Removing write protection in order to initialize drive

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Okay, so I plug in my WD, and it doesn’t show up on my computer, but the LED light does illuminate. I cannot initialize the drive because it is write protected, which I have so far been unable to remove. I’ve tried changing the writeprotect data value to 0 etc, none of this has worked. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I’m running:

Windows 7

WDT–D2B (does that make any sense? I’m a product noob)

2

Try deleting the driver unplug drive and reboot computer and plug back in.

Joe

3

did you fixed you problem?

i’ve got the same problem with my  WDT–D2B.

i’m waiting for your answer.

4

Nope sorry, didn’t help! Still not working, nor showing up under my computer.

5

Please try the following:

Click > Start > RUN > type “CMD” Then 
Type “CHKDSK” and type your Passport drive letter and “/F”. Ex. chkdsk Q: /F > Enter

You’ll see many msg error. OK! 

Now, you remove your Passport drive and plug it again. 
Try to format it. 

6

I installed SP1 on Windows 7 earlier this week and ran into the write protected with a sync program on all my external drives. I went into the drive properties sharing advanced sharing and fumbled around and finally got it straightened out. Sharing/permissions are a real pain on Vista and Windows 7.

Joe

7

JNUNEZ wrote:

Please try the following:

 

Click > Start > RUN > type “CMD” Then 
Type “CHKDSK” and type your Passport drive letter and “/F”. Ex. chkdsk Q: /F > Enter

 

You’ll see many msg error. OK! 

 

Now, you remove your Passport drive and plug it again. 
Try to format it. 

How do I know what my drive letter is if it’s not showing up in My Computer?

8

Okay I tried this, and tried to initialize the drive. It is still coming up with an error message saying it is write protected.

9

Any other ideas?

10

Have you tried using a utility to restore the partition table on the drive?

11

No, how would I go about that? And would that mean losing what’s on the drive?

12

Please help, I have tried every thing (diskpart , changing registry, all recovery software). When ever i try o initialize i get a error  “he media is write protected”. Please help me

13

Follow this insructions:

Thumbscrew is my attempt at a poor man’s USB write blocker. When used it allows you to quickly enable or disable writing to all USB mass storage devices on your Windows system. In other words, you can use it to make a USB flash drive, hard drive or IDE / SATA drive in an enclosure read only. However, I make no guarantees as to its forensic validity. Still, if your poor and you want to play around with making forensic images of thumb drives and other USB mass storage devices it may come in handy. You will see one of two icons in your system tray to indicate whether or not USB mass storage devices are set to be read only:

Simply click on the icon and choose the menu item to toggle write access. All Thumbscrew really does is flip a bit in the registry at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies\WriteProtect

Thumbscrew has a few limitations:

  1. I can’t guarantee it’s 100% forensically sound. Buy a proven USB hardware write blocker if you want to be sure.

  2. USB mass storage devices that are already mounted as writeable will stay writeable until they are removed and reinserted. The same applies if you turn off read only protection while a USB mass storage device is active, it will become writable and stay that way until removed and reinserted.

You don’t need to format the disk, after installing this just reconect the drive and will shown AutoPlay…

Hope that this will help to someone.