workspace suddenly becomes read-only

[MatthewFoster]

Hi Everyone,
This is driving me crazy.  I will be working on editing a point shapefile (or feature class in a file geodatabase), adding points and an attribute for the ID as I go along.  I can save the edits as I go (and I do), but after a few saves, the shapefile or feature class suddenly becomes read-only - or at least, that is what ArcGIS tells me, "Unable to save edits. Workspace or data source is read only".  I never set anything to read only, and after successfully saving my file 3 times (in the latest case) it decides to give me this error on the fourth time!  I have tried putting the geodatabase in a different directory, I've tried as a shapefile... Any ideas?  This has happened repeatedly with different projects lately.  Very frustrating

Thanks in advance,

Matt

[christophershuler]

I don't know how many times I have looked through this thread struggling with the same problem.  Thankfully I have figured out the problem on my machine.   (not to say that this applies to your machine, but perhaps I can provide some insight)

I am running an independent Windows 7 desktop, 64 bit with Arc 10.1.  I'm not using or sharing data from a server or anything, however I have a Western Digital Hard drive that continuously auto-backs up my desktop hard drive.  If I try to edit anything in ArcMap I have about 2 minutes to save my edits before I get the aforementioned read only workspace error message.  If I open up my hard drive's application and tell it to stop backing up my files I can edit in ArcMap without problems.  Once I switch it to start backing things up again ArcMap presents the exact same error.  

This leads me to believe that the issue I was having was due to some background process (either within arc or on my AutoBackup) saving or caching an alternate copy of the file that I was working on.  It would be nice if ESRI would troubleshoot the issue further and patch it if it is their problem or put out a help topic on it if it is due to server or backup autosaves, it seems like this issue is quite prevalent. 

Cheers!

[curtvprice]

We just ran into this above today. Single user (checked the lock files, yes all from the user's arcmap process), select the GDB in the ArcMap catalog window error message pops up that schema locks exist.

Here's a comment from a 2008 forum thread by Tom Sethre​ that I thought was helpful:

While exchanging emails with Mark S. with ESRI Support three weeks ago, I stepped through my test sequence once more. I opened ArcCatalog and tried to create a File Geodb on the network drive (in the same folder as my Personal geodb). It failed with a schema lock. Clearly nobody else on the network could have caused the schema lockout.

THE CRAZY-MAKING THING: I then closed ArcCatalog, deleted the New File Geodatabase folder, re-opened ArcCatalog and was able to create a new File Geodatabase on the second try. An attempt to copy a shape from the Personal Geodb to the new network File Geodb failed with the schema lock error.

MY THEORY

ArcCatalog is not allowing time for its lock release to propagate through the network. It looks to me like a timing issue.

I believe that ArcCatalog releases a File Geodb schema lock by deleting the lock file. Sometimes it may take a few milliseconds before the network drive can complete the file delete request and re-broadcast its revised directory contents. This would be consistent with the intermittent nature of this problem.

[curtvprice]

We found another cause to this issue last month:

If you use Catalog connections to the same folder mapped two different ways (ie UNC and letter drive) within your ArcGIS Desktop session, you can run into nasty access issues.

Don't do that!

[AdamLeClair]

Just want to add myself to this list as in 2014 there still is no resolution for this issue. ArcMap 10.1, Windows 7, 64 bit. It's been doing this to me since early December. I'll be working away, saving as I go, then if I get lost in what I'm doing for more than 10 minutes and forget to save, the file is suddenly read only and it instantly blows away everything I've done. No chance to export, just gone. I've had a few editing sessions go on for a bit, then the phone will ring or someone will come in to the room and talk to me and I'm almost guaranteed to have to start over when I get back to working. The last post on this thread makes me think it has something to do with the way my files are being backed up, as while everything is local to my machine, all files related to my thesis are saved to dropbox. I'm turning off syncing for now to see if that helps (with my luck my house will burn down before I turn it back on and I'll have lost everything because it wasn't backed up). I'm working with reference data for a remote sensing project that has required a tremendous amount of very detailed 'by-hand' adjustments of thousands upon thousands of polygons, sometimes altering the polygons by as little as two pixels. At this point, I'm unsure of which edits have saved and which edits haven't. This is the first time a computer program has brought me to actual tears. We shouldn't need to save every time we move a vertices.

[AdamLeClair]

Just wanted to update my last comment. I turned off dropbox syncing and the problem appears to have stopped. I've been editing shapefiles for nearly 11 hours (grad school is such a joy sometimes) and I have yet to get the 'read only' message, whereas I was getting it several times an hour before.

For other people who are experiencing this, my suggestion would be to look in to how your files are being backed up as you work on them.

[EdwardBlair]

Had the same problem.  Editing a file Geodatabase.  Arc 10.1 on Windows 7 64 bit.  Out of the blue after much previous successful editing.  Got to a point where it failed consistently.

Had McAfee virus scan and Mozy back-up running in the background.  Turned both off (and actually disconnected from the Internet) and could then save successfully.  Don't know whether it was McAfee or Mozy or both.

Thank you everyone who suggested looking at the background processes.  Doesn't seem like the best long-term solution to turn them all off, but at least I can move forward.

Ed

[RyanLisowski]

I've recently had this same issue of a FGDB going read-only as well. For background, my project is an ArcMap 10.0 add-in created using the ArcObjects 10.0 SDK. My specs are:

PC-1: Win7 64-Bit ArcMap 10.1 (SP1)
PC-2: Win7 32-Bit ArcMap 10.0 (SP5) [A Virtual Machine, running on PC-1]

I've been programming and testing all along with PC-2, and have not had any problem performing edits to my FGDB. The FGDB resides on a shared corporate network drive. Now that my development work is finished, I attempted to run the add-in on PC-1. I immediately got read-only errors when I tried to perform the same edits as when using PC-2. Just to note, I was using the same login, with the same permissions for both PC-1 and PC-2.

After some trial and error, I managed to get PC-1 to be able edit the FGDB by creating a new folder with a different name, in the same parent directory as the orginal, and copy/pasting the FGDB into the new folder. Note that the copy was done using Windows Explorer, rather than ArcCatalog, although I'm not sure if that would make any difference.

Copying and pasting the FGDB overtop of itself in the original folder still gave me the error, and the only solution that worked was a new folder with a different name for the FGDB to reside in.

Not sure if this will help anyone else, but it's the only way that I managed to get going again (at least for now...).

[EtienneBresciani]

Hi there,

Same problem here. Plus it does not happen randomly but always, and I cannot find any work around. How come that ESRI can not take this issue more seriously after 50 posts on it!!!!????!!!! :mad:

HELP!!!

PS: it happens to me on a point feature that has been created after using Join.

[DimitrisMichelakis]

I am sorry to say this but I have been using two different GIS desktop software to tackle situations like these.

Try Quantum GIS for processing and editing large GIS data-sets. It behaves.

I hope that ESRI will quickly address this issue.

D.

[EtienneBresciani]

Thanks for your reply dimmihel. I finally managed to get my stuff done by coding it in Python using arcpy. It is a shame (learning Python was not in my plans...), but at least it saved me (so far).

Maybe this can give ideas to others...