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I just want to share my experience and solution for a problem that Windows 10 and 11 have with detecting USB stick in Offline and Ready Only mode. I've came across different posts how to resolve it and here is compiled list with steps that will help with resolving issue.

Problem: Windows Disk Manager sees USB sticks / thumb drives as Offline, saying: "Disk is offline because of the policy set by the administrator."

Note: Image below represents error and shows disk in offline mode. My system was having issues only with USB stick drives, but not USB External HDD drives.

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Solution:

Windows shows error in Disk Manager: "Disk is offline because of the policy set by the administrator."

First step:

  1. Run CMD as Administrator
  2. Run 'diskpart'
  3. Check SAN policy by running 'san' which will return 'SAN Policy : Offline Shared'
  4. Change policy by running 'SAN POLICY=OnlineAll'

Second step: (if first did not help)

  1. Run Powershell as an administrator
  2. run command 'get-disk'
  3. Note the Number of the USB drive (that's Number in the first column, not the Serial Number). It's probably the one with "Offline" OperationalStatus.
  4. run command 'set-disk [Disk Number] -isoffline $false'
  5. run command 'get-disk' again - you should see it has changed to Online.
  6. Check in explorer and you should see it available as usual.

Third step: (if disk is Read Only)

  1. Run CMD as Administrator
  2. Run 'diskpart'
  3. Run 'list-disk'
  4. Run 'select disk DISK_NUMBER' - specify disk number
  5. Run 'attributes disk' - to see current attributes
  6. Run 'attributes disk clear readonly' - (which will disable the Read-Only attribute in the selected disk)
  7. Run 'online disk' - if it's not online already

I am sure this will be helpfull to others with same issues.

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