# Solved: WD Passport Drive - Access Denied



## CJS23 (Jan 29, 2009)

Hi

I have a USB 2.0 Western Digital 320 GB External Drive. The Drive is formatted with NTFS. The drive works fine on my home Vista x64 machine.

Last night I wanted to install some software on a Customer's Vista PC.

I used the Safely Remove Hardware utility then removed the drive.

Drove to Customer's house, plugged in the drive and was told Access is Denied unable to read contents of j:

The drive came up as RAW - 0 bytes.

When I went to Run > CMD and typed j: - no problem. DIR - no problem. Could even copy files using Command Shell.

Did a chkdsk j: /f /v - some problems found and resolved but same Access is Denied problem.

In the end I had to reboot in Safe Mode and type the address into Explorer Bar of My Computer to copy files at Customer's house.

What on earth is going on? Did I eject the wrong hardware? (there were 3 choices at time - generic volume, j: and WD Passport Drive - which one should I choose?)

Is it because I formatted the drive in NTFS?


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

It's possible that the customer's machine was infected. That might account for it unless you enforced any specific permissions on the drive from your home machine. It doesn't matter which of those you choose for ejecting. In fact, unless the drive is set for optimized functionality in Device Manager, it has no cache and does not even need to be removed through "Safely Remove".

How was the drive partitioned? If it was partitioned in Vista, it has a different type than the old XP partitions used to be. For full accessibility in both Vista and XP, partitioning in XP may be a good idea, or use the following directions to change Vista to create the old XP partitions.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. 
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VDS\ALIGNMENT 
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD value. 
4. Type LessThan4GB as the new entry name. 
5. Right-click LessThan4GB, and then click Modify. 
6. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, click Decimal. 
7. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK. 
8. Repeat steps 3 through 7 to add the following registry entries: • Between4_8GB 
• Between8_32GB 
• GreaterThan32GB 
Each registry entry must have a value of 0. 
9. Exit Registry Editor.

This problem may be caused by a error in Logical Disk Manager. If the partition that hosts Windows Vista was created during the installation of Windows Vista, a 1-megabyte (MB) alignment boundary is created on the partition. This alignment boundary differs from the alignment boundary that is created by Windows XP. Therefore, when you use Windows XP to create a new partition, the different alignments may cause this problem. *XP deletes Vista created partitions due to a "1 meg boundary alignment" issue.*

This may also be a reason why XP cannot be installed on a system that has previously contained a Vista installation.

Vista also uses the newest version of NTFS which, of course, is alien to XP. But the versions are updated to the correct one each time they are accessed by one of the OS's. In other words, if you run chkdsk from XP on a Vista partition, the NTFS version will be downgraded to that of XP.


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## CJS23 (Jan 29, 2009)

Hi

Both Machines were Vista (mine x64 and Customer's x86)

I think I may have chosen "Optimise for Performance" in Device Manager 9 (I really must stop messing about with settings - lol)

The Sharing aspect interests me. As it's NTFS I guess Security Permissions can be set. 

How do I set it so anyone can access ALL the files on USB WD Drive?

The drive does contain a lot of customer's file backups. Perhaps I have inherited permissions?

I doubt it's a virus issue as customer's PC was a fresh build 2 days ago and has AVG Free 8.0

Thanks for your help


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## CJS23 (Jan 29, 2009)

On a side note - I can't remember if I did a clean format of drive or used the convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs type command.

The drive is not partitioned.

From Belarc WD 2500BEA External USB Device [Hard drive] (250.06 GB) -- drive 2


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

There shouldn't be any permissions on the drive that would prevent it from being accessed by anyone on any machne unless there are special folders on it, like Documents, or you have set those permissions yourself.

It's also possible that someone had "tweaked" one of the machines to create the old XP partitions so that one or the other is using the XP partition format.

If you have a relatively small number of files on that drive and can make a partition that is less than, say, 32 GB's, to contain them, then you may want to just create a small FAT32 partition on that drive for those few files. The partition could then be accessed by Win98 through Vista with no permissions at all.

In any case, if you had run Testdisk on that drive, you almost certainly could have restored the partitions.


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## CJS23 (Jan 29, 2009)

Hi just to clarify if I create a 32 GB Partition and put the files in there that should work?

To be honest it's only about 3 GBs worth of folders that I ever need to access as regards customers anyways.

Can I set the Partition using Vista Disk Management whilst drive in use or should I copy contents to c: temporarily the reformat and do it then?

Thanks again for your help.

Chris


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Well, almost. My idea was to create a new 32 GB FAT32 partition, just since FAT32 is almost universally accessible to Windows, and even Mac's and Linux. There are no permissions in FAT32. You could still have the rest of the drive as an NTFS second partition.

The alternative would be to create XP-style partitions. That can be done in Vista after the registry changes in post #2 are made. That way, the partitions are recognized by both Vista and XP and won't be deleted by XP's disk manager.

But considering that you seem to have had some permissions issues, FAT32 would eliminate those.


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## CJS23 (Jan 29, 2009)

My apologies - didn't see post number 2.

I have made the Registry changes you specify and will monitor the situation.

I will also copy the contents of drive to c: then reformat the USB drive in FAT32

Many thanks indeed for your help.

Regards

Chris


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