Unable to write to external drives

[Akominatus]

I have two external hard drives connected to my PC, one a LaCie and one a Pleiades. I never had any problem reading and writing to and from these drives with earlier versions of Windows, or indeed when they are connected to other computers, but since I installed it, Windows 7 Ultimate will not let me write to them or modify them in any way, though I can still read files on them.

If I try to, e.g., create a new folder or copy a file onto the external disk, I get the message "You need to confirm this operation". If I then click on "Continue", the same message is repeated ad nauseam. I am not given any opportunity to confirm. I am the administrator and indeed only user of this computer, and this has become enough of a major problem that I am seriously considering dumping Windows 7 and going back to an earlier version.

Any help or suggestion would be very welcome.

 

[john steadman]

have you done error check on the drives? right click on the drive click properties/tools/ do error check
also check the partition arrangement, in disk management. should be ntfs format.Also check security for permissions

found this site http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/copy-files-laptop-external-hard-drive/

 

[TrainableMan]

As windows has progressed so has the need for security. My best guess is that W7 sees that the external drives were created by a different "user" and so by default you do not have proper permissions for anything but read access.

If you go to one of the folders on the external drive and right-click, choose Properties, then select the Security tab. If you pick the group you are in you can see and, if you are logged on as an Administrator, change the permissions. The truth is you might have to do this for all the files and folders on the external drives so your best option is to install a little "Take Ownership" script and then run it from windows explorer for each root folder on the external drives (by default it works on all files and subfolders). Note your userid must be an Administrator for Take Ownership to work. You can find the Take Ownership script HERE.