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Davehappen's avatar
Davehappen
Copper Contributor
May 20, 2022

Write Protected

Hi all, I tried to download UBUNTU SERVER on an old win7 machine to try a go at doing a server.

I used balenaEtcher to write the ISO files to an external hard drive, which is now write protected.

I have tried Diskpart, regedit and numerous other softwares that assure me this will fix it (but doesn't).

When I right click on the drive and go to tools I  don'f have the option of changing the drive.

1 Reply

  • DevinZhang's avatar
    DevinZhang
    Copper Contributor
    Jan 19, 2026

    Check the physical write-protect switch on the external hard drive, or use the attributes disk clear readonly command in Diskpart to remove the read-only attribute.