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Windows - External drive readonly when eSATA, working fine when USB

R

rockambole

Junior Member
Hello all,

I have a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex external drive and I've always used with the eSATA cable. However, today I connected the drive to save some files but it didn't let me, always showing a "write protected" error.

I tried everything I found on the internet, mainly to clean attributes, disable policies and take ownership (this last complains to be write protected). I've spent all day long searching for some good info, but no luck 🙁
Then, I connected the drive with a USB 3.0 cable and it worked!

Does anyone know why is that happening and how to solve it? I really need to use the eSATA cable because the USB one is not mine.

Thanks!
 
It's probably the cable or one of the connectors. I've not seen Windows do it, but Linux will go form read-write from read-only if there are too many errors when communicating to the drive (that, or some specific error may trigger it: I've nevr pinned it down, exactly, but there's been a list of I/O errors when it happens, and it only seems to occur aged external disks). If the bridge chip has been damaged, though you're SOL, for that drive.

If the drive has been locked, USB shouldn't work, either.

However, if you use USB 3.0, it should be fast enough, and you can go grab yourself a cable from Monoprice, and then use your own USB 3.0 cable.
 
Cerb said:
It's probably the cable or one of the connectors. I've not seen Windows do it, but Linux will go form read-write from read-only if there are too many errors when communicating to the drive (that, or some specific error may trigger it: I've nevr pinned it down, exactly, but there's been a list of I/O errors when it happens, and it only seems to occur aged external disks). If the bridge chip has been damaged, though you're SOL, for that drive.

If the drive has been locked, USB shouldn't work, either.

However, if you use USB 3.0, it should be fast enough, and you can go grab yourself a cable from Monoprice, and then use your own USB 3.0 cable.
Click to expand...

Good point.
I'm going to try the eSATA cable with another external drive (I know someone who has the exactly same model), I should have tried it before 😳

Thanks!
 
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