Something changing internal hard drive to read only...

Windows 10 Pro Version 21H1 (OS Build 19043.1023)

Hi all. Perhaps my google skills aren't good enough but I've found lots of posts on how to change the drive/volume attributes back to r/w but nothing on what might be changing the drive(s) to read-only in the first place.

I have 4 internal drives. C: (NVMe), D: (SATA HDD), E: (SATA HDD), and X: (SATA HDD). For several years I have run disk cloning software every Sunday night [after midnight] to copy C: to X:. About 6 weeks ago my weekly backup failed with an error that the device was read-only. When I checked, I found that the primary volumes on all 4 drives were set to read-only. No recent changes, other than normal WIN10 updates, came to mind and I couldn't discern anything in the clutter of the event log that showed the attributes being changed. I used DISKPART to change everything back to r/w.

I use this PC only sporadically so I can't say for sure when things happened, only when I noticed them. About a week later I noticed that the destination drive (X:) was set to read-only again. Again, I changed it back to r/w and everything worked properly. Then, a few days later, I noticed that the D: drive was set to read-only, and after looking around and finding nothing obvious, I, again, used DISKPART to change it back to r/w. The D: drive is not involved in the weekly cloning, nor is there anything I'm aware of that might be accessing it in the background.

Today, I noticed that the D: drive was once more in read-only mode. I set it back and am now hoping that someone on this forum might be able to help me sort through the event file and find what is changing the drive/volume attributes.

Btw, I have run SFC and Windows Defender scans and nothing was detected. I also downloaded MalwareBytes and scanned with it -- again, nothing was found.

Windows file explorer shows the folders on D: as read-only but will not clear the attribute. However, as you can see in the attached .txt file, DISKPART never finds either disk or volume set to read-only. The only way you can clear the status is to first set it to read-only and then clear it. Everything works correctly afterwards.

Anyone have any familiarity with this particular issue?

Thanks in advance,

Howard
Redmond, WA

HowardWoodard said:

Windows file explorer shows the folders on D: as read-only but will not clear the attribute.

Howard,

That is a red herring and you can ignore the read-only attribute shown for folders. Folder read-only attributes since Windows 7 have become, to all intents and purposes, meaningless.

This has nothing to do with your real problem.

Denis

I'm using Windows 7, and run into many many folders/files set to read-only, which does absolutely nothing to hinder writing, editing, changing, deleting. Try3 said it best -- "Folder read-only attributes since Windows 7 have become, to all intents and purposes, meaningless."

There's a difference between:

and:

Unlike the Read-only attribute for a file, the Read-only attribute for a folder is typically ignored by Windows,

If you clone a drive the disk signature will be the same on both drives so windows doesnt know which drive is which so it will often set one read only