hard drive - Windows 10 cannot clear readonly attribute from HDD

I have a 2TB WD Re hard drive that I was planning to use in a RAID 1 setup for data storage on my desktop, but I am unable to delete the existing partitions and reformat the drive.

I'm running Windows 10 Pro 1909.

In Disk Manager it shows the following:

This HDD was previously used in another system, but has been on the shelf for a while and I don't remember the details of its previous life. Based on the name and the fact that Windows shows double it's extra capacity, it was obviously used to store backups and possibly as part of a drive is Storage Spaces.

I have used DiskPart to clear the read only attribute from the drive. Each time I do so DiskPart tells me it is successful in clearing the attribute, but the disk remains read only.

I have also tried a couple of tools from EaseUS (EaseUS Tools M and Partition Master Professional) to no avail.

Other sites have suggested editing the registry to clear the read-only attribute at Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies; this path doesn't exist in my registry. I've searched for a similar setting, but haven't found one.

I've also found sites that suggest running CHKDSK. I'm unable to run in /F mode because of the read-only setting; running CHKDSK in read-only mode returned no issues.

I've pretty much run out of ideas to try at this point. The only other thing I've come across is to try GParted in Linux and or this: Locked usb partition read only cannot format post, suggesting to overwrite the disk with dd in Linux.

I don't have Linux installed on any physical computers (all VMs), but will set one up to tonight, if all else fails.

Any additional ideas on things to try are welcome. I do have a hammer I can use, as a last resort.

Answer

Thanks for the insight Moab, it helped me think through where the drive could have become locked.

After your comment I dug a little deeper into the history of the drive: I fired up the Windows Server 2012R2 machine it was used with and connected the drive. I found it was used as a rotating backup drive for a Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials machine; it was thinly provisioned for double its capacity (via storage spaces).

I'm not sure if it was a function of its use as a backup drive or of Storage Spaces (leaning towards the backup drive based on the fact that the backup wizard formats and configures the drive: MS server backup documentation), but the drive was, in fact, locked. I was able to use the domain admin account to unlock the drive and clear the configuration from the old machine.