You determine the write-protect status of a disk by passing an ioexttd to the device with td_protstatus set in io_command. for quick i/o, you must set io_Flags to IOF_QUICK. DiskIO->iotd_Req.io_Flags = IOF_QUICK; DiskIO->iotd_Req.io_Command = TD_PROTSTATUS; BeginIO((struct IORequest *)DiskIO); td_protstatus returns the write-protect status in io_actual. the value will be zero if the disk is not write-protected and nonzero if the disk is write-protected.