WD My Book 8Tb Suddenly changed to read only

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I have a WD My Book 8Tb external drive that was working perfectly. I have nearly filled it so i bought a WD Elements 8Tb drive. Yesterday when i plugged in the new external hard drive in, the WD My Book external hard drive suddenly became read only and virtually unusable as a consequence. I downloaded WD Discovery which said that it was read only. I clicked on the install driver link, which lead me to HFS+ For Windows Paragon Software, which i have installed on my local drive and restarted my machine but the My Book drive is still read only.

Any help would be appreciated as being read only, my WD My Book external hard drive, is virtually unusuable.

2

Hello rugbyjack2005,

Did you check the drive Permission Settings of My Book?

If not, try to check after changing the permission for My Book in Read & Write which might help to resolve this issue. You may follow the below steps to change the drive permissions:

  • Select a disk, then choose File > Get Info.
  • If the information in Sharing & Permissions isn’t visible, click the disclosure triangle.
  • If necessary, click the lock icon to unlock it, then enter an administrator name and password.
  • Click a user or group in the Name column, then choose a privilege setting from the pop-up menu.
  • Select Read & Write

Otherwise, you need to reformat the drive in compatible file format before taking the backup of important data.

3

I wish I could follow your directions, but how do I even get to the “File>Info”? Double Clicking on My Book which I named “2”, because this is the second one I bought, just brings up the files that I’ve put on that book. And if I right click on My Book 2, there is no “File” to get to the “Get Info”.
So could you elaborate a little more on this.
I’ve got Win 7 Pro, and My Book became just “read only” also. I’ve had it now, for about two years now, and it just did this “read only”, just all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever! I’ve tried everything, to fix it, and it looks like I’m gonna have to find somewhere to put all the TB of stuff I have on that Book, so I can reformat it, and I’m really NOT looking forward to that at all!

4

My WD HD WDBBGB0080HBK-EESN 8TB My-Book was farmated under Windows 7 with exFAT.
After working few monthts OK, sudently changed to read-only.
Running Windows “Drive Check” shows no error.
Running WD “Drive Check” also shows no error.
I can’t change this to regular read/write modus.
Using DISKPART with fokus on this HD with “attributes disk clear readonly” does not help.
It still shows:
“* Datenträger 3 Online 7452 GB 0 B *”
(Free storage is steel 0 Bytes)

Using “DISKPART> detail disk” shows:
WD My Book 25EE USB Device
Datenträger-ID: “{43C33C9B-396F-4271-8B5E-F6115AEE982C}”
Typ : “USB”
Status : “Online”
Pfad : “0”
Ziel : “0”
LUN-ID : “0”
Speicherortpfad : “UNAVAILABLE”
Aktueller schreibgeschützter Zustand: Nein
Schreibgeschützt : Nein (not read-only protection)
Startdatenträger : Nein
Auslagerungsdatei-Datenträger : Nein
Ruhezustandsdatei-Datenträger : Nein
Absturzabbild-Datenträger : Nein
Clusterdatenträger : Nein
Volume 6 F 8TBwdB#f2g$ exFAT Partition 7452 GB Fehlerfrei

HD is steel read only
How may I solve this issue? Thanks

5

These instructions are for W10 & WD 4tb MyBook, to solve this read-only problem happening to me suddenly like a bolt out of nowhere (Please share when possible): open CMD dialog

NOTE: IF YOU SELECT VOLUME INSTEAD OF DISK THIS PROCESS WILL NOT WORK!

  • IT’S IMPORTANT TO USE CAPS WHEN CMD line STARTS INDICATING IN CAPS -

On CMD line:
Type DISKPART

C:\Users\XXXnameXXX>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.18362.1
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: XXXmycomputerXXX

DISKPART> select disk 2 (select the disk you want to correct)
Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> attributes disk clear read only

The arguments specified for this command are not valid.
The above reply might happen, if so, then follow the below, if not, then follow same process in lower case (in the very last 2 steps below)…

For more information on the command type: HELP ATTRIBUTES DISK

DISKPART> HELP ATTRIBUTES DISK

Displays, sets, or clears disk attributes for the selected disk.
Syntax: ATTRIBUTES DISK [SET | CLEAR] [READONLY] [NOERR]
SET Sets the specified attribute for the selected dis
CLEAR Clears the specified attribute for the selected disk.
READONLY Specifies that the disk is read-only.
NOERR For scripting only. When an error is encountered, DiskPart continues to process commands as if the error did not occur. Without the NOERR parameter, an error causes DiskPart to exit with an error code. This command allows the user to set, clear, or display the attributes for a disk. When called with no parameters, this command displays the current disk flags. READONLY is currently the only disk flag that may be changed. The BOOT DISK attribute denotes the disk used to boot. For a dynamic mirrored volume, the BOOT DISK attribute is displayed for the disk containing the boot plex of the mirrored boot volume.
Examples:
To display the attributes on the selected disk, type:
ATTRIBUTES DISK
To set the attribute for the selected disk as read-only, type:
ATTRIBUTES DISK SET READONLY
To clear the read-only attribute for the selected disk, type:
ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY

DISKPART> ATTRIBUTES DISK

Current Read-only State : Yes
Read-only : Yes
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

DISKPART> ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY

Disk attributes cleared successfully.

DISKPART> Why on god’s green earth couldn’t I find this simple solve on WD site…

6

Mine tells me I have a dirty disk, so wont copy to. checked status not read only
Now wont show on my mac
Have spent days transferring data from windows laptop and cannot access it on Mac, which I was able to a few days ago.
Not a happy bunny

Oh yes and have followed the advice above too

7

I had this just happen to me and I solved it by reinstalling Paragon. I have no idea why I needed to reinstall the NFTS software but I guess it didn’t like the new OS update. I flipped for 10 minutes while it reformatted but it didn’t delete any of my data and its all “read and write” again.