Intermittently, your external harddisk may turn to readonly mode.  I am talking about the harddisks which do not have any exclusive read-only switch/locks.  Even if you restart or plug-in to another computer, the readonly mode may not change.

 

To make it functioning in write mode as well, just do the following steps:

 

1.  Go to command prompt

2.  Type "DISKPART" and hit enter.  You will get "DISKPART>" prompt.

3.  type "SELECT VOLUME Z" at the "DISKPART" prompt ("Z" being the drive letter of the readonly external hard disk.  You need to provide your own drive letter here).  The command has to return with "Volumn 4 is the selected volume" (your volume number could be different) followed by DISKPART prompt.

4.  type "ATTRIBUTES VOLUME CLEAR READONLY" at the "DISKPART" prompt.  This would clear the "READONLY" attribute of the hard disk.  It has to return with the message "Volume attributes cleared succesfully".

5.  type "EXIT" at the "DISKPART" prompt to get back to normal prompt.

 

I managed to get the above working (twice) with 1.5TB Western Digital External Disk on Windows Server 2008.

 

thanks

Jag