XAMPP: [ERROR] InnoDB: The innodb_system data file 'ibdata1' must be writable

Question

I wanted to make my own wiki for my own personal use and carry it around on an external drive. I am using Windows 10.

I installed XAMPP portable to my external drive and set up MediaWiki yesterday and everything was fine. I turned off my computer without shutting down apache and mysql and woke up to this morning to continue working on it but mysql cannot start. I have no backup yet since I recently just made it yesterday night so I won't be too upset losing the very few articles I written.

InnoDB: using atomic writes.
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use Windows interlocked functions
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Uses event mutexes
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.11
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Number of pools: 1
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Using SSE2 crc32 instructions
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, total size = 16M, instances = 1, chunk size = 16M
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Starting crash recovery from checkpoint LSN=300288
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: 128 out of 128 rollback segments are active.
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Removed temporary tablespace data file: "ibtmp1"
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Creating shared tablespace for temporary tables
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Setting file 'D:\xampp\mysql\data\ibtmp1' size to 12 MB. Physically writing the file full; Please wait ...
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: File 'D:\xampp\mysql\data\ibtmp1' size is now 12 MB.
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Waiting for purge to start
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: 10.4.11 started; log sequence number 300297; transaction id 171
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] InnoDB: Loading buffer pool(s) from D:\xampp\mysql\data\ib_buffer_pool
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] Plugin 'FEEDBACK' is disabled.
2020-04-10 15:05:25 0 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '::'.
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [Note] mysqld: Aria engine: starting recovery
recovered pages: 0% 26% 38% 54% 64% 74% 84% 94% 100% (0.0 seconds); tables to flush: 2 1 0
 (0.1 seconds); 
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [Note] mysqld: Aria engine: recovery done
InnoDB: using atomic writes.
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [ERROR] InnoDB: The innodb_system data file 'ibdata1' must be writable
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [ERROR] InnoDB: The innodb_system data file 'ibdata1' must be writable
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error.
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [Note] Plugin 'FEEDBACK' is disabled.
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB
2020-04-10 15:12:20 0 [ERROR] Aborting

I tried looking at ibdata1, I as administrator should have complete control over it so I'm not sure why I'm getting this error.

What are my options on how to fix this?

Answer 1

Maybe you have existing mysql process is runing, go to task manager to disable it.