I have an external drive connected by usb that has suddenly become write protected. It has been a read/write drive until today. I can't remove files or write new files. It is a 40gb drive. I can't find a switch on the outside of the case and I looked in its properties folder but can't find a check box for the problem. Please help me do something to release the write protect. Thanks, Ron reb286

Is the drive Full? What errors if any are you receiving? Have you disconnected it and reconnected? What brand of drive is it? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

"suddenly become write protected" Try to take ownership if you formatted it in ntfs maybe?? "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

Here we go again! Turned out that I had recently installed a program called "usbscan" to clean my usb external drives. It works well, but I did not understand the end result of some of the check boxes, and still don't. Anyway, I unchecked a couple of boxes that are about writing to the usb drives, restarted my computer, and the files I wanted to delete immediately responded to my delete commands! Also, the computer speed throughout increased suddenly ten fold. I think the usbscan program may have been written in Germany, although it is in good English. Sometimes a good program written originally in a foreign language and translated to a different language can be confusing. Anyway, everything works fine now and I think I will get my flash drive back to normal also -- I had the same problem with it. Thanks for the encouragement to pursue the problem. Just hearing back from you guys sometimes is enough to keep the fight going. Ron reb286