How to fix read-only usb drive?
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I have read-only usb drive and could not fix it. I have read some articles about it and tried to fix but I couldn't.
I unmounted drive and used dosfsck to check and repair MS-DOS filesystems, because it is FAT filesystem and run:
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
it gave the output:
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24) open: Read-only file system
So what can I do with it? Can I repair or it's time to throw it in a trash?
usb usb-drive read-only
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
 |Â
show 3 more comments
up vote
3
down vote
favorite
I have read-only usb drive and could not fix it. I have read some articles about it and tried to fix but I couldn't.
I unmounted drive and used dosfsck to check and repair MS-DOS filesystems, because it is FAT filesystem and run:
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
it gave the output:
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24) open: Read-only file system
So what can I do with it? Can I repair or it's time to throw it in a trash?
usb usb-drive read-only
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
1. where did the USB come from: some USBs -are- read only. Often when those are commercial those USB are hardware locked. 2. Some USB have a hardware lock on the outside.
– Rinzwind
Feb 10 at 12:31
this usb was worked normally and once it became read-only. I think during monting or unmounting
– godot
Feb 10 at 12:41
Can you add the output of dmesg when you insert the USB?
– Katu
Feb 16 at 13:59
what is dmesg??
– godot
Feb 16 at 14:51
Maybe the tips in the following link will help, askubuntu.com/questions/144852/…
– sudodus
Feb 16 at 15:12
 |Â
show 3 more comments
up vote
3
down vote
favorite
up vote
3
down vote
favorite
I have read-only usb drive and could not fix it. I have read some articles about it and tried to fix but I couldn't.
I unmounted drive and used dosfsck to check and repair MS-DOS filesystems, because it is FAT filesystem and run:
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
it gave the output:
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24) open: Read-only file system
So what can I do with it? Can I repair or it's time to throw it in a trash?
usb usb-drive read-only
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
I have read-only usb drive and could not fix it. I have read some articles about it and tried to fix but I couldn't.
I unmounted drive and used dosfsck to check and repair MS-DOS filesystems, because it is FAT filesystem and run:
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
it gave the output:
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24) open: Read-only file system
So what can I do with it? Can I repair or it's time to throw it in a trash?
usb usb-drive read-only
usb usb-drive read-only
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
edited Feb 10 at 11:54
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
asked Feb 10 at 11:07
godot
70210
70210
1. where did the USB come from: some USBs -are- read only. Often when those are commercial those USB are hardware locked. 2. Some USB have a hardware lock on the outside.
– Rinzwind
Feb 10 at 12:31
this usb was worked normally and once it became read-only. I think during monting or unmounting
– godot
Feb 10 at 12:41
Can you add the output of dmesg when you insert the USB?
– Katu
Feb 16 at 13:59
what is dmesg??
– godot
Feb 16 at 14:51
Maybe the tips in the following link will help, askubuntu.com/questions/144852/…
– sudodus
Feb 16 at 15:12
 |Â
show 3 more comments
1. where did the USB come from: some USBs -are- read only. Often when those are commercial those USB are hardware locked. 2. Some USB have a hardware lock on the outside.
– Rinzwind
Feb 10 at 12:31
this usb was worked normally and once it became read-only. I think during monting or unmounting
– godot
Feb 10 at 12:41
Can you add the output of dmesg when you insert the USB?
– Katu
Feb 16 at 13:59
what is dmesg??
– godot
Feb 16 at 14:51
Maybe the tips in the following link will help, askubuntu.com/questions/144852/…
– sudodus
Feb 16 at 15:12
1. where did the USB come from: some USBs -are- read only. Often when those are commercial those USB are hardware locked. 2. Some USB have a hardware lock on the outside.
– Rinzwind
Feb 10 at 12:31
1. where did the USB come from: some USBs -are- read only. Often when those are commercial those USB are hardware locked. 2. Some USB have a hardware lock on the outside.
– Rinzwind
Feb 10 at 12:31
this usb was worked normally and once it became read-only. I think during monting or unmounting
– godot
Feb 10 at 12:41
this usb was worked normally and once it became read-only. I think during monting or unmounting
– godot
Feb 10 at 12:41
Can you add the output of dmesg when you insert the USB?
– Katu
Feb 16 at 13:59
Can you add the output of dmesg when you insert the USB?
– Katu
Feb 16 at 13:59
what is dmesg??
– godot
Feb 16 at 14:51
what is dmesg??
– godot
Feb 16 at 14:51
Maybe the tips in the following link will help, askubuntu.com/questions/144852/…
– sudodus
Feb 16 at 15:12
Maybe the tips in the following link will help, askubuntu.com/questions/144852/…
– sudodus
Feb 16 at 15:12
 |Â
show 3 more comments
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
up vote
6
down vote
accepted
If the USB was once writable and is now no longer, this suggests 3 things in my mind:
A hardware switch on the device has been toggled.
If this is the case, the simple fix would be to find that hardware switch (they can be really subtle), and toggle it.
An "unclean" unmount occurred, such as pulling the USB out of the slot before the OS finished writing data to it
To save the life of devices, and to improve performance, writes to most storage mediums are buffered -- including USB drives. In essence, this means then unless you tell the operating system to eject/unmount the USB drive, you have no guarantee that all data has been written. Further, most filesystems have flags to indicate when they've been mounted and unmounted: always tell the OS you're going to remove the drive ("eject", "unmount", "turn off") before you pull it out of the slot.
Consequently, if simply checking and fixing the filesystem does not work, then you could try the ham-fisted approach of copying your data temporarily somewhere else, reformatting your USB drive, and then copying your data back. By reformatting, you're completely overwriting what was there, so the OS/filesystem will have no recollection the USB drive/filesystem was readonly before the format.
One detail on repairing the filesystem. Make sure it's not mounted first. Your set of commands implies it's mounted. So:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1The USB disk itself is dying, and the embedded firmware is protecting you from losing any data.
If the USB uses flash-based storage, it's possible that you have written to the device enough times that it is now unable to write anymore. Writing to flash-based is a destructive process, and each sector can only take so many rewrites. Many drives will "hide" this fact, by internally having much larger storage (say 16G of total write space), but only present to the OS as a smaller amount (say 2G). As each sector begins to wear out, the firmware will automatically move the data to a new unused sector. After too many writes, however, there will be no more usable storage, and smart firmware implementations will lock the drive to prevent data loss. At that point, your only option would be to copy the data to a new flash drive.
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
If there is nothing on the drive you need to keep, use "gparted" to create a new filesystem on the drive, create a new partition and format it to your format of choice (I guess you want fat32 ?). If it mounts read only, you need to change the permissions of the mount point.
– hatterman
Feb 20 at 14:35
add a comment |Â
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
up vote
6
down vote
accepted
If the USB was once writable and is now no longer, this suggests 3 things in my mind:
A hardware switch on the device has been toggled.
If this is the case, the simple fix would be to find that hardware switch (they can be really subtle), and toggle it.
An "unclean" unmount occurred, such as pulling the USB out of the slot before the OS finished writing data to it
To save the life of devices, and to improve performance, writes to most storage mediums are buffered -- including USB drives. In essence, this means then unless you tell the operating system to eject/unmount the USB drive, you have no guarantee that all data has been written. Further, most filesystems have flags to indicate when they've been mounted and unmounted: always tell the OS you're going to remove the drive ("eject", "unmount", "turn off") before you pull it out of the slot.
Consequently, if simply checking and fixing the filesystem does not work, then you could try the ham-fisted approach of copying your data temporarily somewhere else, reformatting your USB drive, and then copying your data back. By reformatting, you're completely overwriting what was there, so the OS/filesystem will have no recollection the USB drive/filesystem was readonly before the format.
One detail on repairing the filesystem. Make sure it's not mounted first. Your set of commands implies it's mounted. So:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1The USB disk itself is dying, and the embedded firmware is protecting you from losing any data.
If the USB uses flash-based storage, it's possible that you have written to the device enough times that it is now unable to write anymore. Writing to flash-based is a destructive process, and each sector can only take so many rewrites. Many drives will "hide" this fact, by internally having much larger storage (say 16G of total write space), but only present to the OS as a smaller amount (say 2G). As each sector begins to wear out, the firmware will automatically move the data to a new unused sector. After too many writes, however, there will be no more usable storage, and smart firmware implementations will lock the drive to prevent data loss. At that point, your only option would be to copy the data to a new flash drive.
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
If there is nothing on the drive you need to keep, use "gparted" to create a new filesystem on the drive, create a new partition and format it to your format of choice (I guess you want fat32 ?). If it mounts read only, you need to change the permissions of the mount point.
– hatterman
Feb 20 at 14:35
add a comment |Â
up vote
6
down vote
accepted
If the USB was once writable and is now no longer, this suggests 3 things in my mind:
A hardware switch on the device has been toggled.
If this is the case, the simple fix would be to find that hardware switch (they can be really subtle), and toggle it.
An "unclean" unmount occurred, such as pulling the USB out of the slot before the OS finished writing data to it
To save the life of devices, and to improve performance, writes to most storage mediums are buffered -- including USB drives. In essence, this means then unless you tell the operating system to eject/unmount the USB drive, you have no guarantee that all data has been written. Further, most filesystems have flags to indicate when they've been mounted and unmounted: always tell the OS you're going to remove the drive ("eject", "unmount", "turn off") before you pull it out of the slot.
Consequently, if simply checking and fixing the filesystem does not work, then you could try the ham-fisted approach of copying your data temporarily somewhere else, reformatting your USB drive, and then copying your data back. By reformatting, you're completely overwriting what was there, so the OS/filesystem will have no recollection the USB drive/filesystem was readonly before the format.
One detail on repairing the filesystem. Make sure it's not mounted first. Your set of commands implies it's mounted. So:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1The USB disk itself is dying, and the embedded firmware is protecting you from losing any data.
If the USB uses flash-based storage, it's possible that you have written to the device enough times that it is now unable to write anymore. Writing to flash-based is a destructive process, and each sector can only take so many rewrites. Many drives will "hide" this fact, by internally having much larger storage (say 16G of total write space), but only present to the OS as a smaller amount (say 2G). As each sector begins to wear out, the firmware will automatically move the data to a new unused sector. After too many writes, however, there will be no more usable storage, and smart firmware implementations will lock the drive to prevent data loss. At that point, your only option would be to copy the data to a new flash drive.
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
If there is nothing on the drive you need to keep, use "gparted" to create a new filesystem on the drive, create a new partition and format it to your format of choice (I guess you want fat32 ?). If it mounts read only, you need to change the permissions of the mount point.
– hatterman
Feb 20 at 14:35
add a comment |Â
up vote
6
down vote
accepted
up vote
6
down vote
accepted
If the USB was once writable and is now no longer, this suggests 3 things in my mind:
A hardware switch on the device has been toggled.
If this is the case, the simple fix would be to find that hardware switch (they can be really subtle), and toggle it.
An "unclean" unmount occurred, such as pulling the USB out of the slot before the OS finished writing data to it
To save the life of devices, and to improve performance, writes to most storage mediums are buffered -- including USB drives. In essence, this means then unless you tell the operating system to eject/unmount the USB drive, you have no guarantee that all data has been written. Further, most filesystems have flags to indicate when they've been mounted and unmounted: always tell the OS you're going to remove the drive ("eject", "unmount", "turn off") before you pull it out of the slot.
Consequently, if simply checking and fixing the filesystem does not work, then you could try the ham-fisted approach of copying your data temporarily somewhere else, reformatting your USB drive, and then copying your data back. By reformatting, you're completely overwriting what was there, so the OS/filesystem will have no recollection the USB drive/filesystem was readonly before the format.
One detail on repairing the filesystem. Make sure it's not mounted first. Your set of commands implies it's mounted. So:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1The USB disk itself is dying, and the embedded firmware is protecting you from losing any data.
If the USB uses flash-based storage, it's possible that you have written to the device enough times that it is now unable to write anymore. Writing to flash-based is a destructive process, and each sector can only take so many rewrites. Many drives will "hide" this fact, by internally having much larger storage (say 16G of total write space), but only present to the OS as a smaller amount (say 2G). As each sector begins to wear out, the firmware will automatically move the data to a new unused sector. After too many writes, however, there will be no more usable storage, and smart firmware implementations will lock the drive to prevent data loss. At that point, your only option would be to copy the data to a new flash drive.
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
If the USB was once writable and is now no longer, this suggests 3 things in my mind:
A hardware switch on the device has been toggled.
If this is the case, the simple fix would be to find that hardware switch (they can be really subtle), and toggle it.
An "unclean" unmount occurred, such as pulling the USB out of the slot before the OS finished writing data to it
To save the life of devices, and to improve performance, writes to most storage mediums are buffered -- including USB drives. In essence, this means then unless you tell the operating system to eject/unmount the USB drive, you have no guarantee that all data has been written. Further, most filesystems have flags to indicate when they've been mounted and unmounted: always tell the OS you're going to remove the drive ("eject", "unmount", "turn off") before you pull it out of the slot.
Consequently, if simply checking and fixing the filesystem does not work, then you could try the ham-fisted approach of copying your data temporarily somewhere else, reformatting your USB drive, and then copying your data back. By reformatting, you're completely overwriting what was there, so the OS/filesystem will have no recollection the USB drive/filesystem was readonly before the format.
One detail on repairing the filesystem. Make sure it's not mounted first. Your set of commands implies it's mounted. So:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1The USB disk itself is dying, and the embedded firmware is protecting you from losing any data.
If the USB uses flash-based storage, it's possible that you have written to the device enough times that it is now unable to write anymore. Writing to flash-based is a destructive process, and each sector can only take so many rewrites. Many drives will "hide" this fact, by internally having much larger storage (say 16G of total write space), but only present to the OS as a smaller amount (say 2G). As each sector begins to wear out, the firmware will automatically move the data to a new unused sector. After too many writes, however, there will be no more usable storage, and smart firmware implementations will lock the drive to prevent data loss. At that point, your only option would be to copy the data to a new flash drive.
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
edited Feb 16 at 16:30
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
answered Feb 16 at 16:17
hunteke
2838
2838
If there is nothing on the drive you need to keep, use "gparted" to create a new filesystem on the drive, create a new partition and format it to your format of choice (I guess you want fat32 ?). If it mounts read only, you need to change the permissions of the mount point.
– hatterman
Feb 20 at 14:35
add a comment |Â
If there is nothing on the drive you need to keep, use "gparted" to create a new filesystem on the drive, create a new partition and format it to your format of choice (I guess you want fat32 ?). If it mounts read only, you need to change the permissions of the mount point.
– hatterman
Feb 20 at 14:35
If there is nothing on the drive you need to keep, use "gparted" to create a new filesystem on the drive, create a new partition and format it to your format of choice (I guess you want fat32 ?). If it mounts read only, you need to change the permissions of the mount point.
– hatterman
Feb 20 at 14:35
If there is nothing on the drive you need to keep, use "gparted" to create a new filesystem on the drive, create a new partition and format it to your format of choice (I guess you want fat32 ?). If it mounts read only, you need to change the permissions of the mount point.
– hatterman
Feb 20 at 14:35
add a comment |Â
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1. where did the USB come from: some USBs -are- read only. Often when those are commercial those USB are hardware locked. 2. Some USB have a hardware lock on the outside.
– Rinzwind
Feb 10 at 12:31
this usb was worked normally and once it became read-only. I think during monting or unmounting
– godot
Feb 10 at 12:41
Can you add the output of dmesg when you insert the USB?
– Katu
Feb 16 at 13:59
what is dmesg??
– godot
Feb 16 at 14:51
Maybe the tips in the following link will help, askubuntu.com/questions/144852/…
– sudodus
Feb 16 at 15:12