Tim - 2019-06-19

Edited majorly with the result.

Windows 10 Home. I'm running as a normal user, trying to create a container on a removable drive. (I tried running as Administrator, but I got a warning at create time, saying that that might make permissions that a normal user couldn't use.) ... I clicked Format. After a few seconds, I get a popup saying

VeraCrypt Volume Creation Wizard

The media is write protected.

Source: volTransformThreadFunction:2749

Then another popup "Failed to create volume e:\thefilename.hc". Thing is, I can create a file at the top level of e:. And it has much more free space than 900 GB that I requested. 250 MB worked, 300 MB did not.

Solution: I wrote a lot previously about different settings that I tried. Eventually I used a common technique: when in doubt, unplug it and plug it back in. (Or turn it off and back on again, but this USB drive doesn't have a power switch.) That made it work.

Which makes it worrisome, of course, wondering why it failed the first time, whether it's going to fail again randomly in the future. That's pretty nasty for a backup device. But I have a workaround for now.

 

Last edit: Tim 2019-06-20