Usb key suddenly became read only

Hi,
my usb key used to work fine between OS X and Windows XP. Now after it was removed from XP without unmounting it, it's read only on OS X.
It's formatted in MS-DOS FAT 16 and Disk Utility can't reformat it.
Any suggestion is welcome!

Many USB keys have a small lock switch that will make them read only. Check to make sure that hasn't slipped accidently to the lock position.

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Hard Drive / Volume (DroboPro) has suddenly became read only!? I think its due to a permission issue and i cannot correct it

Bit concerned, my iMac seemed to crash yesterday... when i restarted the iMac .. i got the following message:
OS X can’t repair the disk “DroboPro.”
You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can
At the time the iMac crashed, i was downloading some files over the web... and at the same time importing a movie into iTunes. I believe it was iTunes that possibly crashed first... it seemed to be taking longer than normal to import a movie into iTunes, but left it running and went and ate dinner. when i returned, i couldn't wake the machine from the screen saver. it appeared to have locked up. I had no choice but to hard-reset the imac. when it rebooted, the external drive (drobopro) was in read only mode - i can read from it but can't write to it.
I have been initially trying to trouble shoot this as a DroboPro issue - but that drive seems fine. most of the reading i have done points to a permissions issue which is something in OS X that needs fixing.
I found these support articles on the drobo website
1) http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/det...d-only-and
2) http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/det...ld-i-do%3F
Per the first article, I tried using drobo dashboard app to shut down the drobopro, then restart my imac and then bring the drobopro back up again to clear the permissions issue. that didn't work. (I actually tried that twice)
When I go into disk utility on the imac, and click on the drobo disk... i cannot click on the repair permissions button, its greyed out. i can click on verify disk... when i readthe details that come up.. in red it says Invalid Node structure, The Volume DroboPro could not be verified completely, the File system check exit code is 8; Error: The disk needs to be repaired, click Repair disk.
i checked the tools in drobo dashboard and according to drobo dashboard the disk is healthy. its about 50% utilised; so definitely no space issues. i have 4 x 2TB disks in it and setup i a high redundancy mode so actual available space is about 5.4TB, and there is 2.62 TB available.
I then looked back at the first article again - and it says to get cocktail disk utility. i got that and went to PILOT tab as suggested, but the only option is to repair permissions on Mackintosh HD. so i went ahead and repaired the permissions on Mackintosh HD, but that hasn't fixed the issue either. The last options seems to be to do a super user move via the Apple Terminal, which i am a little apprehensive about doing - so i have avoided that.
Drobo support suggested i try DiskWarrier - i have downloaded that app and tried to repair permissions using that. again i can only run that on the imac disc, but that doesn't work either!?
I am stuck now, what shall i try? look forward to see if anyone can help.

Ok, so I have to apologise for that fact that a minute after making this post I managed to fix the problem...
Blew the dirt from the connector port. Really...? You ask...
This sure did fix my problem and after doing some more hard searching through the forums here looks like it fixed others too.
Dirt in the connector port meant the iPhone thought (for some reason) it was connected to a dock or such, thus removing the controls.
Anyway, cheers and hope this might help someone else.

Table became read-only

I have an Access interface to an Oracle 10g database so that our analyst can enter data in from spreadsheets. Recently, one of the tables that she's working with became read-only when she deleted the existing table in Access, and re-imported it from Oracle. She's done the same to other tables, and is still able to write to them. I went in and checked her rights in the OEM, and she has the same rights across all objects. I'm trying to log in under her userid in SQL*Plus, but when I try querying from any of the user tables that she uses, its telling me that the tables/views don't exist. But if I select table_name from all_tables, it does show the system tables and other tables as well - just none of the user tables. Is there anything else I can try to figure out what's going on here?

Access will only allow read-only on Oracle tables unless the primary key is identified in Access. 'Edit' the table and identify the primary key.

My external USB drive became read-only

I migrated from a Macbook (black) to a new Macbook Pro (late 2008 model) a week ago. Everything seemed to work fine except that I can't write to an external USB drive (worked fine with the Macbook) from my new Macbook Pro. Disk utility indicated I only have read-only access and didn't give me a way to change the permissions. The drive still works normally (read-write) with the old Macbook.
The drive was formatted as Mac OS extended (journaled.) Both computers are running 10.5.5 when this happened. I have since upgraded my Macbook Pro to 10.5.6 but won't have an opportunity to test it with my drive till January.
I know I can re-format the drive with Macbook pro but I don't want to lose the data. I have no other storage to temporary hold the data (about 450G worth.) I tend to change computers every 6 months or so. This will continue to be a problem for me. I am looking for a nice permanent solution.
Thanks.

Welcome to Apple Discussions:
You probably do not have write access to the drive, if it came from a Mac with another account.
In a terminal run the command
ls -al /volumes
and see what permissions the drive has.
You should see something like
drwxrwxrwx 1 nero nero 16384 Dec 18 13:02 TravelDrive
Where "nero" is the name of the user who has access to the drive. Notice that on my drive, everyone has read, write, execute privileges on the drive.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Time Capsule has suddenly gone "Read Only"

My Time Capsule has suddenly decided to stop backing up from my iMac, however the MacBook Pro still works fine with it. I get a message that it is now "Read only" - trying to reselect the drive has no effect.
Any ideas?

I've just had the same experience, suddenly discovering that my Time Machine volume on my external hard disk had become a read only volume.
I believe this discovery has something to do with the manner in which my external hard disk was recently shut down by my UPS backup master control mechanism. As a result of this inappropriate shut down, my Time Machine volume somehow became unmounted. That volume's icon remained on my desktop so the unmounting was a bit deceptive in that the volume appeared to remain mounted; that is, icon visible.
Not realizing this unmounting problem at first, I used Disk Utilities to discover whatever I might by repairing permissions and verifying that Time Machine volume. I didn't discover any untoward problems that way but I did notice from the Disk Utilities window that my Time Machine volume had somehow become unmounted.
Now the funny thing was that the Disk Utilities icon for mounting/unmounting a selected volume appeared to be stuck in the unmount option even though the wording showing at the bottom of the Disk Utilities window clearly showed that my volume was already unmounted. (Apparently Disk Utilities can become conflicted.)
So, I simply clicked on that unmount icon. My Time Machine volume then disappeared from my desk top as expected. Next, I clicked on the newly named mount icon and my Time Machine volume icon reappeared on my desktop as expected.
Then I used my Time Machine menu to prompt a back up now. Everything is now working fine once more.
If you're having sudden read only Time Machine volume issues, try the above approach. You might like it. (Let us know of your results, too.)

External hard drive suddenly become read only

For those who have been using an external hard drive on OS X (using NTFS file system) without any problem and suddenly one day the system has started mounting it as a read only file system, this is because the file system right now has some inconsistences.
As it happened last night to me i started googling for a quick solution to solve the problem. But i didnt find anything out there. At least at first glance. So then i checked the system logs of the system in order to get some sort of specific information about why that was happening (in OS you have an application that makes so easy to have a look through the system logs and its in /applications/utilities/console.app). In my case, and i repeat, IN MY CASE, the problem was the following:
21/07/11 18:59:02 kernel NTFS-fs warning (device /dev/disk1s1, pid 2140): ntfs_system_inodes_get(): $MFTMirr does not match $MFT. Will not be able to remount read-write. Run ntfsfix and/or chkdsk.
So afterwards once known the problem, was as easy as to mount the external HD in windows and execute the command chkdsk /f (google about the usage of the tool if dont know how it works).
Alternatively, you have the Linux option using the ntfsfix command, but you will need to install the program before that (if dont have it previously in your system) or otherwise you won't be able to use it (sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs)
Hope it helps.
Marc

I got an error message that my External Hard Drive was now 'read only'. Having scoured the various forums looking for clues as to why it had happened I found numerous suggestions, all of which seemed overly complicated and beyond my basic understanding (I'm old enough to remember when Macs 'just worked').
Anyway, among the suggestions on how to correct this I found what seemed like an overly simplified one - 'Don't switch on your external hard drive until after you've booted up'. Since I tend to leave mine on all the time, I immediately turned it off and back on again and ran Time Machine in hope rather than expectation. Would you believe it? It backed up as normal first time. Hope it works for anyone else having the same problem.

All USB drives mount as read only for user

I have searched a bunch and thee results I find seem to be irrelevant to my situation. Most relate to a single USB media that is a problem and won't read or write.
On a new Arch install on a new computer (my third base system install). Running Gnome.
All USB mass storage devices mount as read only for the logged in user. Root has write permissions and I can mkdir no problem. It is not an issue with the USB drive itself as this occurs with multiple USB media (I've tested several SD cards on a reader and at least two drives, all the media works correctly on my existing installations)
I'm posting the contents of my /etc/group file in case there's an obvious error there I don't see, and my dmesg output upon plugging in the drive. User name is changed in the group file posted to "archie"
This is a single-user system.
/ect/group
root:x:0:root
bin:x:1:root,bin,daemon
daemon:x:2:root,bin,daemon
sys:x:3:root,bin
adm:x:4:root,daemon
tty:x:5:
disk:x:6:root
lp:x:7:daemon
mem:x:8:
kmem:x:9:
wheel:x:10:root,archie
ftp:x:11:
mail:x:12:
uucp:x:14:archie
log:x:19:root
utmp:x:20:
locate:x:21:
rfkill:x:24:
smmsp:x:25:
http:x:33:
games:x:50:
lock:x:54:
uuidd:x:68:
dbus:x:81:
network:x:90:
video:x:91:
audio:x:92:
optical:x:93:
floppy:x:94:
storage:x:95:
scanner:x:96:
power:x:98:
nobody:x:99:
users:x:100:archie
systemd-journal:x:190:
archie:x:1000:
avahi:x:84:
polkitd:x:102:
rtkit:x:133:
gdm:x:120:
brlapi:x:999:
kvm:x:78:
ntp:x:87:archie
dmesg output
[ 968.044188] usb 4-3: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
[ 968.170628] usb-storage 4-3:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 968.171435] scsi7 : usb-storage 4-3:1.0
[ 969.174450] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic USB SD Reader 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 969.175068] scsi 7:0:0:1: Direct-Access Generic USB MS Reader 1.03 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 969.939417] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 15572992 512-byte logical blocks: (7.97 GB/7.42 GiB)
[ 969.941028] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 969.941037] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[ 969.944664] sd 7:0:0:1: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 969.945509] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[ 969.945517] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 969.952682] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[ 969.952693] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 969.956396] sdb: sdb1
[ 969.965003] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[ 969.965011] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 969.965015] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
I'm sure I'm just missing something in user management, but I can't find what.
Last edited by hooya (2014-04-27 03:10:49)

I am also having the same problem. Root can read and write to automounted drives, but my user cannot. I've tried with a variety of drives, I am assuming they are being automounted by root instead of the logged-in user somehow. (I am running x directly, and am not using a display manager, if that has anything to do with it).
When I look at how it is mounted it is as follows:
/dev/sdc1 on /run/media/myuser/drivename type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)

SOLVED: vfat filesystem suddenly becomes read only when running wine

I did a pacman -Syu (it's been a couple of weeks or so) and since then I have a very strange problem.
I have a vfat partition with World of Warcraft installed on it. It is mounted as:
/dev/sda10 /mnt/data vfat rw,noatime,user,umask=0000 0 0
When I run World of Warcraft with wine, suddenly I get errors of this type:
strongbad:home/brett> touch /mnt/data/Games/WoW/Interface/AddOns/blehe
touch: cannot touch `/mnt/data/Games/WoW/Interface/AddOns/blehe': Read-only file system
even though ls -l shows 777 permissions.
If I unmount and remount with mount -a, then I can touch files just fine... until I run WoW again.
I've scanned through recent package updates and nothing jumps out at me as a possible cause (wine for example hasn't been updated since February 25).
Anyone have any idea what might cause this? It's possible other things than wine do it, but it happens 100% of the time.
Last edited by vor_lord (2008-05-14 12:19:34)

This turned out to be a disk going bad after all. When certain corrupt sectors were accessed the disk went to read-only.

How to share a usb connected drive as read only with smb

I have OS X 10.10 installed and want to share a folder on a USB connected hard drive (HFS+ formatted) via SMB as read only.
(The client computers should not be able to change nor delete files from the share.)
I created a share in system preferences->file sharing and configured only myself as user to have read/write access.
Still another user is able to connect to the share from another Mac running OS X 10.6.8 and can delete files from it!
I have disabled AFP sharing. Only SMB sharing is enabled.
Is there a major bug in SMB sharing in Yosemite or am I missing something.
Gerd.

Hey there Max,
If you can’t find the printer in the network browser, it may be easier to add the printer manually using the URL field, as shown in the article below.
Mac OS X: How to manually add a Windows shared printer - Apple Support
Ciao,
-Jason

[Solved]Arch Linux Gnome writing to usb disk destination is read only

Hi
i Have installed Arch Linux latest image 1-3-2015 not using Evolution Linux or any GUI installer
i installed Arch Linux using command line
i have gnome 3.14
each time i try to write movie to usb flash or usb external hard disk
the error says
the destination disk is read only
how to change this
Last edited by belal (2015-04-04 20:58:54)

I'm curious. Is the filesystem on the USB, ntfs ?
If yes, did you install NTFS-3G ? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NTFS-3G. Happened to me 8 days ago .
EDIT - Sorry for the repost using the same solution as my above post. Didn't see his link. Just surfed through the posts for the word "NTFS-3g" and it wasn't there.
Last edited by newguy (2015-03-31 07:51:48)

TM drive became read-only, only to be fixed by Verify Disk ?!?!

Could one of you experts out there please explain this to me. My small brain can't wrap my mind around what happened -
Yesterday I had to restore my system from a TM backup. After this, I decided to erase the TM drive and start backing up fresh. I did this, and for the past 5 hours, Time Machine has been happily backing up to this newly-erased partition.
However, just a few minutes ago, I got an error message from TM. It said that the backup couldn't be completed because the volume was "read only". I couldn't believe this, so I checked out Get Info, and indeed it said that I only had read access to the volume that Time machine's been writing to for the past 5 hours! I found the KB article HT3275 that said to do a Repair on the TM drive. But Repair Disk was grayed out; only Verify Disk was lit.
I checked around further, and couldn't come up with what caused this change in permissions, so I decided to do the Verify Disk just to see if there were any HD errors, but the partition came up clean. But then I couldn't believe my eyes - the Repair Disk button was now active! I switched back to Finder and did a Get Info on the TM partition, and it was back to allowing me Read/Write access!
How could a Verify Disk operation cause the permissions to change from Read Only to Read/Write? The only system operation I did during those 5 hours of good TM backups was to change my Computer Name and uncheck "Use dynamic global hostname".
Please, one of you Time Machine/OS X/UNIX gurus explain to this feeble mind what occurred here. I really need to know so that this won't happen again.
Thanks.

I tried running
sudo fsck /dev/sdb1
and got the following error:
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.18
fsck: fsck.ntfs: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.ntfs for /dev/sdb1

External Hard Drive became read-only [SOLVED]

I have a seagate external hard drive formated to ntfs. I have been using it successfully with arch until recently. Now when I try to add files to it it refuses. I tried changing the permission back with
sudo chmod ugo+rwx -R /media/FreeAgent\ Drive
But, it returned a "Read-Only file system" error for every file. I'm not sure what caused this, any suggestions? Thanks in advance for the help.
Last edited by briff (2010-09-06 18:46:48)

I tried running
sudo fsck /dev/sdb1
and got the following error:
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.18
fsck: fsck.ntfs: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.ntfs for /dev/sdb1

How do I change permissions for West Dig USB HD, how said "read only" and can't use it.

I have a West Did Hard drive from my PC that want to use on my Macbook. Looking at the permissions said "read only". I tried to move files on the drive and could not when attached to my Macbook. Where do I change these settings that will allow me to use this drive. Thanks for any help.
This is my first Mac so do not know much about the Mac process, moving slow and steady.
Donco

Was this drive in use with a windows machine previously?
If yes then I would guess that it is formatted as NTFS, Mac's can not write to NTFS discs.
If you have sufficient space on your Mac copy the disk contents to a folder on your desktop and reformat the drive for use with Mac and Windows, then put the files back.
Post back with some answers and I'll try to guide you through this

Disk became read only

After the last update my backup disk has become read-only and the Permissions are grayed out so I cannot change the setting.
Any solutions?
Thanks

After doing a reboot it I waited a day but then I tried Time Machine for the heck of it and it worked.
I looked at my backup drive permissions and the lock is not grayed out anymore. The permissions are the same however. So maybe I didn't have to wait any time after the reboot to run time machine again. Hmmmm. Still no explanation for why this happens though but just because permissions are still the same doesn't mean Time Machine will still not work after the reboot. I don't know if the act of running Time Machine triggered the lock to be available for unlock or if I didn't notice it was unlockable after the reboot.

HT201250 My external hard drive suddenly says "read-only" should I run a disk repair on it and what does that do?

Has any one used Disk Repair on an external hard drive? Does it erase everything?

Repair the Hard Drive
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Fix Permissions for a Locked Drive
Open Terminal in the Utilities folder. Paste the following at the prompt. Press RETURN after each. The first command will prompt for you to enter your admin password. It will not be echoed to the screen. After entering your password press RETURN again.
sudo chflags 0 /volumes/*
sudo chmod a+rx /volumes/*
killall finder
An alternative is to download BatChmod and use it to fix the permissions.

Usb key suddenly became read only

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