Hard disk write protected: Set or remove write-protection with diskpart

Yesterday I faced the problem that I couldn’t save data on an external USB-hard drive on my Windows / client anymore.
Folders couldn’t be created either.

The hard drive was listed as “write-protected” in the disk management of Windows.

 Why is my hard drive write-protected?

Usually this behavior should only occur when creating new partitions and hard drives or when a hard drive is recognized as “new”. The latter can happen easily with USB-hard drives or any RAID-controllers. In case the problem occurs sporadically it can usually be solved by repeated reboots.
A really interesting feature. It exists under Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

How to remove the write protection of a hard disk?

The solution is called “diskpart”.

Of course you can also set the write-protection with “diskpart”.

Instead of the command “attributes disk clear readonly” you would then have to type in “attributes disk set readonly“.