Windows 10: HELP - External USB Drive Permissions Preventing File Recovery

The situation I have at hand is as follows:

My Seagate 2TB External USB Backup + drive (6 months old) overnight became unusable/ accessible, below are the things I have tried to enable read/write capability so I can reformat the drive to then run a file recovery on.
The drive does not make any strange noises - no clunking, clicking or grinding

EDIT: I wanted to add, If I attempt to access the drive contents from the file explorer, the system returns alerts that the disk is not formatted




Which is followed by a Not Available alert:




When viewing Computer Management, the Seagate drive shows as:




What I have determined, is that the Seagate has read only permissions
When I access Properties for the drive in question, there is no Security tab, rather I am left with Sharing -> Advanced Sharing which I have utilized attempting to remove read only permissions via the GUI and I receive the following error:




At this point, I then attempted making changes VIA command line using DISKPART which returns the following:

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 931 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 1863 GB 1863 GB *

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> attributes disk
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No


The above indicates that Read/ Write capability is enabled.

I went ahead and ran: attributes disk clear readonly
which the system returns a success message, even though read/write is still blocked.


I have also edited the Windows Registry according to the following, only in the DWORD I use '0' which should set read/write as true:

How to Enable Write Protection for USB Devices on Windows 10


At either rate, this modification did nothing for me with respect to allowing me to format the drive to then run a recovery on.



I have also attempted using AOMEI Partition Assistant which is supposed to be able to work around the read/write issue?? ... the program would run actions against the disk and while the progress meter only traveled to 10% of the total amount, the program returns a SUCCESS alert, but the drive is still in a read/write protected mode!



Has anyone got any words of wisdom and possible solutions to this situation?

Thanking you in advance for your help

Best Regards

:)

 

Creating a Recovery Drive on USB flash Drive

Hi,

Since it didn't work using a USB, we suggest that you try to create a Recovery Drive on an external hard drive and check if it will work. Some times using higher storage device like external hard drive can help in utilizing the files.

Keep us posted.

 

Help with external hard drive

Hi Debbra,

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

I appreciate your interest in windows 10 and also for trying the troubleshooting steps to fix the issue. I understand the inconvenience you faced. I will certainly help you with this.

I would suggest you to plug in hard drive then check in disk management you can see the drive or not.

Follow the steps to check Drive in Disk Management.

• 
  Go to the Control Panel then click on the
  Administrative Tools. .
  
• 
  Under the Administrative Tool Click on Computer Management.
  
• 
  Click on Disk Management and check the External Hard Drive.
  

Also check in BIOS whether External Hard Drive is listed or not.

For help with the BIOS settings, refer to the computer manual or contact the manufacturer.

If it doesn’t work then, I would suggest you to update BIOS for updating BIOS contact Lenovo Support.

Follow the link:

Home - Global Support - DE

Disclaimer :

Modifying BIOS/complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring of BIOS/CMOS settings
can be solved. Modifications of the settings are at your own risk.

Hope this information is helpful. Please do let us know if you need further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you.

Thanks.

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.