How to Fix Error When Cloning Disks: Media is Write Protected

Rarely a newly attached disk will show up properly in Windows Disk Management but attempting to write to it will produce the Windows error “Media is Write-Protected”. The solution is fairly simple. Click “Disk Tools”, then “Diskpart Tool” from BackupChain’s main menu. Then while in diskpart, issue the command:

list disk

Once you know the disk number you want to clone to (i.e. your target disk. Critical note: please be 100% certain to select the correct disk number because the following commands will clear its contents), say disk #1, the next command is:

select disk 1
online
clean
ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY

Once you have run the above commands, the disk is fully online and no longer write protected.

If the disk 1 in our above example contains data and you wish to confirm that you selected the correct disk, before clearing it you could run DETAIL DISK to see which volumes belong to it. However this method isn’t 100% accurate because if you have many disks of the same kind and they are blank, you might still have trouble identifying the correct disk number. In that case, use BackupChain’s main menu -> Disk Tools -> Disk Information. The Disk Information screen identifies each disk number with the disk’s serial number, which is often if not always printed on the hard drive. Once you have confirmed the disk number using its hardware serial number you can safely proceed with the commands above.