Wednesday, August 18, 2010

How to fix an exFAT drive being write protected

Recently I connected an external Verbatim RAID HD to another Vista computer, while copying files to it the USB connection was broken and re-established (without touching anything).
After the drive again had mounted the drive I was coying files to was write protected! Huh?

Solution: run "chkdsk /F"

"Error 0x80071AC3: The operation could not be completed because the volume is dirty"
This is the message I got from Windows backup as I tried it to see if it would give any other message than "Write protected".
So the drive got "dirty" after the abrupted disconnection and running checkdisk on it to fix any errors will remove the "dirt".

At first I ran  "chkdsk /R" but that did not work so I ended up running "chkdsk i: /F /R /X" but it would probably be sufficient with only /F as is also worked for this guy "McoreD".

The checkdisk output: (fixes the problem even it states that there was no problem ;-) 
C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk i: /F /R /X
The type of the file system is exFAT.
Volume Serial Number is 80DA-01EE
Windows is verifying files and folders...
Volume label is exFat.
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows is verifying free space...
  2041292 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

43 comments:

Bábi said...

Thanks, man! I had the same problem :)

GlosterOldPhart said...

Wasted hours of my life trying to sort this very problem. Tried everything including Registry changes. Had reached time for the sledghammer cure, found your site tried your suggestion - bingo! All sorted - Many thanks!

Unknown said...

For me it didnt work

but all of errors was the same even your error code

after windows is verifying files n folders....

it wrote CORRUPTION WAS FOUND WHILE EXAMING VOLUME BITMAP.

Do you know other ways?

my hard disk has problem with check disk I
think

Lephi Gau said...

thanks man! i had fixed for my hdd ext!

Bryan with a mustache said...

Im trying this out on my Hitachi Touro Pro 2TB, and it's stuck at "Windows is verifying files and folders..."

Any clue how long this should take? There's only about 300gb of used space...

Bryan with a mustache said...

BTW the HDD is formatted exFat, for cross-OS support.

The drive operates fine, but accidentally was unplugged a few days ago. Still works, but I get the chkdsk popup ever time I plug it up, and I can only read from now. Really annoying...

Eduardo Rocha Tavares said...

Thanks man! That did work indeed!

Unknown said...

My exfat 2tb hitachi touro drive experienced this same problem. I would try to alter read only and it would say "write-protected".

I tried the full chkdsk /f /r /x but it was taking AGES. Well days more like.

Canceled it and chkdsk /f worked just fine. Can change files now. Took minutes.....versus the days I was dreading.

Dot Guru said...

Perfect solution chkdsk i: /F

Thnx for ur contribution.

Unknown said...

Thanks man! It fixed my HDD. I was down to ground when I got this problem. But by luck or some means saw your post and it fixed the problem. Thanks again!

Unknown said...

I tried the chkdsk x: /F on my 64gb Flash drive and it worked like magic. Thanks a million. u saved my miserable life

Surfaced said...

Thank you! I formatted a flash drive to ExFAT using a Mac's Disk Utility and I could not load files onto it with Windows 7 until I performed these steps.

Ike95 said...

It worked for me. I visited many sites that simply instructed me to run checkdisk (chkdsk) without paramaters. That didn't work. Yours, however, did. Thanks very much.

Val said...

Still relevant! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unknown said...

awesome friends , i was facing similar issue ..

chkdsk i: /F /R /X -- was taking very long time

but chkdsk i: /F was fast .. (fraction of seconds )


Thanks a lot

Amar Agha said...

/F did nothing
/F /R /X is STILL going

SD card are very expensive pieces of garbage

Unknown said...

+1 from France my good man !

You saved my life ! (Read-Only locked exFat secondary drive; used chkdsk E: /f)

James said...

Thanks, first time I've experienced this issue with exFat and Windows bizarrely locking it down.

If only I'd read CHKDSK /f would have been sufficient, I'd have saved some time!

jakrad said...

Thank you so much, I was in despair and now I'm not!

Unknown said...

I have a drive that, every once in a while, decides to stop accepting writes. May be it's the drive, may be it's the file system (exFAT). Unfortunately, it doesn't do it that often as for me to remember how to fix it.

But every time I search for the solution, I land here. Thank you.

Unknown said...

I got my Kingston 64GB Flash Drive, can't format this one. I've tried doing chkdsk H: /F
and here's what it shows.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Revz>chkdsk H: /F
The type of the file system is exFAT.
Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

C:\Users\Revz>


please Help.....

Unknown said...

Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu :D :D
It worked!

Unknown said...

I could run chkdsk on my Windows machine due to insufficent rights. I had the rights to run the normal volume check but that didn't resolve the problem. The I used diskutil repairDisk on my Mac and the write-protection was gone on the Windows machine. I should mention that I have Tuxera's NTFS driver installed, but I think since the partition was exfat the native Mac one was used.

Unknown said...

Thanks Man! Your advice is still working chkdsk h: /F ... great!
For some reason Android or Windows decided to lock the MicroSD card to write-protected... now it's fine.

Unknown said...

i didn't knew anything about how to solve this error. So, I checked hundreds of websites and got many different answers but none could solve my problem. Thanks to you dude, you finally saved my drive. Hats off!

Unknown said...

run both chkdsk e:/f and chkdsk e: /f /r /x still have problem " an error occurred while examing the volume bitmap" for Samsung 128g. please help

Unknown said...

Ran it without the /R /X on a 2tb WB passport after spending hours trying to fix it. You saved it!!!

Thank you!

Unknown said...

Thanks man. I got solution fir my 2tb hdd

Unknown said...

Used command chkdsk i: /F
And it worked fine on my 2TB WD PASSPORT HDD. thanks LOL

gary said...

Thanks! It worked...

gary said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DrX said...

Thanks again for this life-saving tip. Just wanted to add a bit more to it. I ran this chkdsk /f session several times - to "completion" I thought, only to discover the session crashed, and all repairs were lost. Then I tried again and interrupted the chkdsk session several times at say 20% into each session - this closing of the command window, allowed the next session to start at the end of the last - i.e. repairs were being committed at each closure !! Eventually all repairs completed !

Andrew Sia said...

thank you for this tip. it definitely saved me a lot of time browsing around the net. Even if the post is made on the year 2010. the solution still works!!

Tobias Grodmark (nä?) said...

Worked perfectly with chkdsk driveletter: /f

Unknown said...

Is there any other alternatives.
Try chkdsk i: /f
Still can't copy files to hard disk.

youtripity said...

I had the exact same issue. I spent an hour trying the above fixes and others with now luck. I am running windows 7 on my computer with an external harddrive issue "dirty". I tried checkdisk from CMD promp and property/tools of disk drive to fix problem with no luck. System kept stating read only and chkdsk could not continue. I attached the external hardrive to a new machine with the most current operating system and ran checkdisk from the properties of drive with issue. After a few minutes the drive was fixed and works just fine on my windows 7 machine.

Unknown said...

Worked for me, thanks a lot man!

Unknown said...

There is no need for check disk ... Connect the hard disk or what ever it is to the system with which it worked normally before and eject the disk step by step i.e. by right click eject disk bla bla... It worked for me 😎

Unknown said...

It isn’t working for me it says ( an unspecified error occurred <766f6c756d652e63 3f1>.

Help

Syphenf said...

Hi All,
As said this is originally an old post but is obviously still relevant and helpful.
So my situation is the same. exfat filesystem on my micro sd card. I've formatted several times, with same results of files intermittently not being able to be copied until i do another chkdsk /f. After doing chkdsk /f completely . I would check to see if drive still "dirty" from command prompt - fsutil dirty query x: . The response would be "drive not dirty". I few seconds later I would access the drive and then run the same "dirty query" from command line and out the blue it would once again result in "drive is dirty". and when copying I would get an error message.
So I've tried this, inserting the sd card into my phone, and using the phone (Android) I would format. I am currently copying over 10GBs and its already progressed well pass the previous copy progress made with the same files.

This will delete all data so back up your data from the SD CARD beforehand if you need to save the data

So my contribution - insert the micro sd card into your phone as your phone's mass storage device. Go to the options in your phones settings for your external storage. locate the options for your external storage and choose format.

Unknown said...

tried everything...still getting "an error occurred while examining the volume bitmap" error..pls help:(

Unknown said...

Yup. Same

Ghoz said...

I'm from Indonesia, i follow your advice and boom... my HDD 2T fixed... all my file now readable again.. thanks Man!

Beneran bisa, pake CMD and chkdsk, hampir gw ke toko recovery data, udh tanya2 diminta 2-10jt broo.. buset.. the power of google