# Write restricted files



## whatbeup (Nov 14, 2011)

Hey, so I have a file on my sd card and it doesn't let me delete it. It says write-restricted, and when I try to change permissions it doesn't let me change it. I also tried formatting, but it refuses to go away.. how would I go about removing it? Thanks in advance

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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

some sdcards have a switch on them to toggle allowing one to write to them.


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## whatbeup (Nov 14, 2011)

yarly said:


> some sdcards have a switch on them to toggle allowing one to write to them.


Oh it's the internal sd card on my Verizon gs3. How do I switch it so I can delete the one file?

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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

You dont have an internal sdcard, it's just part of the solid state drive that emulates an sdcard using fuse. You or someone else created the file or modified it in /data/media, which is where it acts like a normal system file and not an sdcard. If you do that and then go try to screw around with it on the fake sdcard area where it's emulated, then you're going to have a bad time.

To delete it, you need to mount data in read/write mod and then delete it from where it's located in /data/media. Afterwards, don't mess with files under data/media again to avoid issues.


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## whatbeup (Nov 14, 2011)

yarly said:


> You dont have an internal sdcard, it's just part of the solid state drive that emulates an sdcard using fuse. You or someone else created the file or modified it in /data/media, which is where it acts like a normal system file and not an sdcard. If you do that and then go try to screw around with it on the fake sdcard area where it's emulated, then you're going to have a bad time.
> 
> To delete it, you need to mount data in read/write mod and then delete it from where it's located in /data/media. Afterwards, don't mess with files under data/media again to avoid issues.


Huh, that's kind of confusing, but it worked, thanks for the help, cuz I probably wouldn't have thought to look there.

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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

simple answer = android fakes the sd card by telling part of your internal storage to act like it's one instead of like the default linux filesystem (using fuse). Getting much deeper than that gets too complex if you aren't familiar with mounting/dismounting and emulation on Linux.


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