How to recover files from external hard drive which is write protected

Once your external hard drive is write protected, you cannot add anything to it. You can format it to fix this problem. But before you do that you should make sure that your external hard drive is really in write protection, and you also should back up the data, so you do not need to format it immediately.

Sometimes, your external hard drive cannot be read and write for it has a dead USB port or cable. You can diagnose and fix the USB port or cable. If it is not the fault of USB port and cable, you can follow the following steps to remove the write protection.

How to recover files from write protected external drive?

Before you try to remove the write protection, you should back up all the data on the external hard drive. If you cannot copy the files, you should use a data recovery software to restore the files first.

There are generally three ways for you to remove the write protection of external hard drive.

First, you can use the command prompt.

Click the start button an input cmd in the search box,you will find the cmd.exe, right-click to run as administrator.

In the opened command prompt, you should type DISKPART and press enter. Then you need to find your drive.

Type LIST DISK and press enter. The system will list all the disk and their detailed information like size,free space. You can distinguish your external hard drive according to the size and free space.

Type SELECT DISK 2 and press enter. Disk 2 is the number of your external hard drive. Then their is a message says that Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

Type in ATTRIBUTES DISK and press enter. It will tell you the attribute of your external hard drive. If your drive is in write protected, it will tell you that: Current Read-only state :Yes. Then you need to remove the read-only state.

Type ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY and press enter. After that you will see a line says that Disk attributes cleared successfully.

Close the window and try to add new files to your drive. If the write protection has been removed ,that’s great, if not, you may need to use the software.

The format utility

You can try the manufactures tool to format the drive, or use the third-party software .

And there are many other causes for your external hard drive is in write protection such as the virus infection, or the free space is not enough for the new data. So you should take measures depending on the situation.

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