Not write protected!

Posts: 6 · mrpp 26 Oct 2019, 17:25

I love this program and rely on it heavily to keep my backups current, but the last few updates have triggered a weird problem, where all of a sudden the program thinks my flash drive is write protected, but it isn't. I can't find the setting that's causing the problem, so I wind up having to format the flash drive and start over, and if I do this enough times, or wait long enough (I really can't tell which...), the program gets over its objection and starts working normally again. This is a big headache, though, and I really don't want to keep formatting the flash drive every time I update the program. Advice would be greatly appreciated.

Posts: 4867 · xCSxXenon 7 Nov 2019, 22:37

That is usually related to the drive or something funky going on with disk management. You can set readonly flags in diskpart

Posts: 6 · mrpp 11 Dec 2020, 16:20

I used diskpart to reset the disk attribute, and FreeFileSync is still giving me the "ERROR_ACCESS DENIED" response. It's not saying that the disk is write protected per se anymore, but I can't run an update.

Posts: 1202 · therube 14 Dec 2020, 19:44

How, or is, this thread different from your other thread, Flash Drives NOT write protected?

Posts: 6 · mrpp 14 Dec 2020, 19:48

@therube: They're two iterations of the same recurring problem. By the time of the 2nd thread, I had honestly forgotten about the earlier one, and then the replies criscrossed.

Posts: 4867 · xCSxXenon 15 Dec 2020, 20:49

Clean disk and resync?

Posts: 6 · mrpp 15 Dec 2020, 20:56

If you mean the Windows optimization/chkdsk function, that never finds any error. If you mean wipe the disk and start over, that's generally what I've had to do, but it doesn't fix the problem right away. I have to wait several days, maybe a week, then it works fine again. That aspect remains a mystery. I've never been able to pin it down, but maybe simply waiting a few days allows the problem to go away on its own? Very hard to tell, since I'm usually frustrated enough to start *doing* things immediately. I think the next time I won't do anything but wait, and see what happens.

Posts: 1 · asolteiro 7 Apr 2021, 16:56

If you mean the Windows optimization/chkdsk function, that never finds any error. If you mean wipe the disk and start over, that's generally what I've had to do, but it doesn't fix the problem right away. I have to wait several days, maybe a week, then it works fine again. That aspect remains a mystery. I've never been able to pin it down, but maybe simply waiting a few days allows the problem to go away on its own? Very hard to tell, since I'm usually frustrated enough to start *doing* things immediately. I think the next time I won't do anything but wait, and see what happens. mrpp, 15 Dec 2020, 20:56

Hello, I recently started having a problem apparently similar to the one described above.
I was unable to synchronize my pc with my pendrive because the system returns an "Access Denied" message as a result of a write protection problem. In fact, with every message, if I try to delete, even if manually, some pendrive file, I can't.
After several attempts, I discovered that the problem is related with freefilesync files in the pendrive, because if I delete them, when I could (ie when I remove and introduce the pendrive several times), the write protection problem doesn’t exist. But it come back again…
This is not practical. Maybe I will need to change my sync program, if this problem continues.
Best regards.