# My external hard drive is write protected? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 14, 2008, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-external-hard-drive-is-write-protected/472688 "2008-11-14T09:16:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dumbguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Dumbguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dumbguy)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2008, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-external-hard-drive-is-write-protected/472688/1 "2008-11-14T09:16:10Z")
I recently moved to Germany and brought a bunch of stuff with me on an external hard drive. I wasn’t sure if it would work here because of the power supply, but it supports 90V to 240V, so I got a European power cord and it worked fine. At first I was just copying files, and I didn’t have any problems, but then when I tried to save a file to the hard drive it said ‘The disk is write protected. Remove the write-protection or use another disk’. I can’t move or delete files either. I looked for a hardware write protection switch, but I don’t see one. I know memory sticks usually have those. Couldn’t see anything in the drive’s Properties in Windows either. Could be the drive was just damaged in transit, I guess. It’s a FAT32, USBII hard drive. I’ve tried it on 32bit and 64bit XP. Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2008, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-external-hard-drive-is-write-protected/472688/2 "2008-11-14T09:26:22Z")
There’s a registry hack available at the [How To Geek](http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/registry-hack-to-disable-writing-to-usb-drives/) site. Scroll down and look for the Enable USB Write link.