FireWire External Drive - Read Only Filesystem

I have a strange issue that I have not been able to resolve. I have an external hard drive connected to my iMac that has a read only file system. I have used it for years without issue. It switched to read only just recently.
Here are the details:
27-inch, Mid 2011 iMac
Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB
Software OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)
The drive in question:
Mount Point : /Volumes/DATA
Capacity : 2 TB (2,000,054,960,128 Bytes)
Format : Mac OS Extended
Available : 450.83 GB (450,826,641,408 Bytes)
Owners Enabled : No
Used : 1.55 TB (1,549,228,318,720 Bytes)
Number of Folders : 15,989
Number of Files : 84,118
As you can see, everything is set to Read & Write. However when I try to remove a file, I get:
$ rm -f test.file
rm: test.file: Read-only file system
If I try to write a file I get:
$ touch test.file
touch: test.file: Read-only file system
I have run the First Aid utilities and everything checks out OK:
The volume DATA appears to be OK.
Rebooting does not fix the issue either. After searching here and the interwebs, I haven't found a solution. Only references to FAT/NTFS formatted drives.
Is there anything else I can do that I missed?

Thank you Linc & MrJavaDeveloper!
I'm not throwing these suggestions out the window, but they would also be exhiiting some other symptoms too. With indexing issues, it shouldn't impact the inode or anything dealing with the filesystem.
The good thing is that the data is all still good and is readable.
First Aid is still the name of the tab in Disk Utility :-)
Regardless, I got impatient and I didn't have a spare drive to copy the data off of it so that I can rebuild this drive. So I nuked it and recreated the partition. Now I have to wait a couple of weeks for my restore from CrashPlan to finish :-P.

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USB Flash Drive: Read-only filesystem

Hi
I'm trying to format a usb flash drive using various tools but they all say that it's a read-only file system. The drive is not mounted and I'm running as root. If I try to mount the drive like so with the command
sudo mount -o rw,users /dev/sdc1 /media/myflashdrive
I don't get any errors and when I go to /media/myflashdrive I can see and edit all the files (only as root however). However, any changes are not persistent. For example, if I delete any files or run
sudo rm -rf /media/myflashdrive/*
it seems to work and ls doesn't show anything, but then if a reopen the drive, the files are back.
I've tried this on other computers and even in Windows but nothing can put a scratch on it. I heard something about there being a certain bit in the first sector which can be flipped to make a drive read-only but I think it only applied to Windows.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, but if I can't format the drive I'll probably use some thermite to toast the data on it.

Hmm. I wasn't very clear: my drive was usable originally but it stopped working while I was using Windows (I just plugged it in one day and it was read-only) and now that I use Linux I thought I'd try to fix it (I have been told that linux can do anything but I'm not so sure). I suppose it could just be a physical error on the drive but it's not got any marks or anything.
Just a thought here, if it was a physical problem, would it be possible to 'reset' it with an electromagnet or by shorting it out or would this just frazzle the chip? Maybe not the right forums for that kind of question.
Last edited by JJ.Eastwood (2011-05-26 19:50:56)

External drives read only problem

iam a new mac user. i have 2 external drives formatted to ntfs that can only read. They are too large to transfer files to the mac to reformat to fat32. Any workaround suggestions?

yopadima wrote:
iam a new mac user. i have 2 external drives formatted to ntfs that can only read. They are too large to transfer files to the mac to reformat to fat32. Any workaround suggestions?
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Folks--
I went away on vacation in December 2010 and shut my mac osx 10.5.8 desktop computer off, and with it my lacie 1T external drive, partitioned into three volumes, one of which served as my Time Machine backup volume. When I returned from vacation in early January 2011, Time Machine said that the volume in question was no longer available. Somehow it had become "read only." When I tried to fix it using Disk Utility I was unable to even verify it. When I tried to copy the files from the volume to another drive so that I could reformat, I received error message 1426. I'm feeling a little stuck. It seems like the only option is to reformat the entire drive and lose all of the back ups (the other two volumes have older backups).
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

nicx wrote:
Is it really corrupted? I can still access all the data on the volume, I just can't copy it or get the volume out of the read-only status.
Yes. If OSX marked it "read-only," it's corrupted.
Time Machine backups are intricately linked together; anything corrupted means the whole set is suspect. You may be able to restore some things, you might even be able to do a full system restore from some backups; but somewhere, something is corrupted. OSX knows that, and won't let you resume backing-up to corrupted backups, or copy them (even if you could copy them, the copy would be corrupted, too).

External drive - READ ONLY

What's with the hard drives customers buy from the apple stores?
I have had this hard drive for a few weeks now and after reformatting the drive 5 times and coped a few items to the drive a few days latter it says read only you cant copy to this drive WHAT THE F#%$
Please help with this on going FULT with apple and its products..
(using a iMac with a Porsche design)

Use the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to reformat it to MS-DOS if you need to use it with a PC, or Mac OS Extended otherwise; if for some reason you don't want to or can't erase the drive, install Paragon NTFS or MacFUSE onto Mac OS X.
(27993)

[SOLVED] Strange Hard Drive Errors - Read Only Filesystem?

Solution: Discard old laptop, buy new laptop
I have an Acer Aspire 5103WLMi. For about 2 months now, Arch has been running smoothly. Until 2 weeks ago.
It all started when I tried to install and configure autofs on Arch x86_64. On the next reboot, all manner of errors were printed to the screen, to the effect that the internal hard drive was only being mounted read-only, rendering the system unusable. I tried to find a solution, but there were no references to read-only anywhere; fstab, grub etc. None that I could find.
I tried reinstalling. However, x86_64 Arch refused to boot properly first time due to the exact same error; and I *know* that I'm configuring everything correctly. I managed (somehow) to coerce i686 Arch to install, and things "work".
Seemingly out of the blue, during normal operation, all running applications will stop, and spit out error after error to the effect of "Cannot Write to Read Only Filesystem!". Sakura won't load (Input/Output error, apparently), and the only way to shut down the laptop is a hard reset (I can't log in as root or use sudo because it wants to write to the filesystem first, which it obviously can't.
Now, I'm going to be giving the insides of this laptop a good cleanout this weekend, and I'm in the process of backing up all of my data, but I was wondering if anyone else has come across a similar form of misbehaviour; or (with a bit of luck) some potential solutions?
This is very peculiar, because there seems to be no reason why the laptop suddenly loses write permissions to the hard drive. Cheers.
Edit: I think I should point out that my /boot partition is Ext2, and / and /home are Ext3
Last edited by aphirst (2013-03-27 14:51:38)

Smartctl gives me the impression it's my Hard Drive:
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 100 100 001 Pre-fail Always - 1711
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6194
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 092 092 000 Old_age Always - 3291
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0033 223 100 030 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1218
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 294
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 088 088 000 Old_age Always - 123904
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 34 (Lifetime Min/Max 15/62)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 17
220 Disk_Shift 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 118
222 Loaded_Hours 0x0032 094 094 000 Old_age Always - 2425
223 Load_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
224 Load_Friction 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
226 Load-in_Time 0x0026 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 444
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0001 100 100 001 Pre-fail Offline - 0
Everything being either Old_age or Pre-fail is not encouraging. Additionally, in the output is what I believe to be records of what caused my strange read-only behaviour:
Error 19 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 3287 hours (136 days + 23 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
84 51 01 11 18 6a e1 Error: ICRC, ABRT 1 sectors at LBA = 0x016a1811 = 23730193
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
c8 00 48 c4 17 6a e1 00 04:43:08.023 READ DMA
c8 00 48 14 e3 69 e1 00 04:43:08.022 READ DMA
c8 00 a0 5c e2 69 e1 00 04:43:08.010 READ DMA
c8 00 08 9c e5 69 e1 00 04:43:08.010 READ DMA
c8 00 20 5c e5 69 e1 00 04:43:08.009 READ DMA
Could this truly be referring to my problem, since the 'logs' show that the *exact same* error occurred many times.
Not that this tells me how to fix it...
Well, if anyone knows if there is a solution, I'd love to know. If the only solution is to ditch the Hard Drive, fair enough. Either way: I'm backing up all of my important data ASAP.
Cheers.
Oh, and kclive18, after I noticed that I couldn't get onto my Drive, I reinstalled arch, leaving no trace of /etc/autofs/auto.media.
Additionally, somehow I have now been able to install Arch x86_64, but the problems still occur...

FireWire external drives and bootable DVD's

I have 2 Mac Pro running 10.5.2 with all recent updates:
1) Mac Pro *****UXYL model MacPro3,1 (early 2008)
2) Mac Pro *****00PX model MacPro1,1 ROM de démarrage : MP11.005D.B00
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On the first one, nothing of this is possible : I cannot mount a FireWire drive only an USB drive. I cannot use CD or DVD bootables except of course Install Disks (version 1.1)
I tried to obtain an answer from Apple support without any success.
<post edited by host>

The ROM has been reported in the past to be one element of the issue, but in general Apple has made it abundently clear that you can't install an older operating system on a Mac nor boot from an older operating system than the Mac than came with it in these two articles:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303315
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25517
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Welcome to Apple Discussions!
You might want to consider a FireWire powered optical drive:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/optical-drives/
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Reset lost root password and now have read only filesystem

Hello,
I have recently had to reset a locked root password by booting from cdrom, mounting the first boot disk, editing the shadow file to remove root's password and rebooting the system.
The system has booted OK but, I now have a read only filesystem - everything in / cannot be edited, passwd doesnt work etc.
df -k shows the root (/) filesystem has been mounted on the physical disk I edited:
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/pci@83,4000/FJSV,ulsa@2,1/disk@0,0:a 10085836 185862 9799116 2% /
but in the vfstab it still references the disksuite metadevice:
#device device mount FS fsck mount mount
#to mount to fsck point type pass at boot options
/dev/md/dsk/d30 /dev/md/rdsk/d30 / ufs 1 no -
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df -k should have shown root mounted on md0
e.g. on my machine
# df -k
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/md/dsk/d0 8260691 4366317 3811768 54% /
what does /etc/system show for rootdev?
# grep rootdev /etc/system
* rootdev: Set the root device. This should be a fully
* rootdev:/sbus@1,f8000000/esp@0,800000/sd@3,0:a
rootdev:/pseudo/md@0:0,0,blk
Remember if this is a mirrored drive, when you boot from CD you may need to mount both sides of the mirror and make changes on both sides- otherwise the replication may not goes as expected.
Actually, I have run into problems with the modifying one side of a mirror this way. In the past Sun tech support would recommend that I break the mirror and then rebuild it once the system is up and running. So in your case you may want to boot from CD, mount the 1st disk slice, edit /etc/vfstab AND /etc/system, boot into the OS and use the various meta commands to delete and rebuild the mirror- or at least maybe to drop and reattach the 2nd 1/2 of the mirror.

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When you boot up into single user mode, there is a single recognized user -- root. That's why they call it single-user mode and not multi-user mode.
When you boot up into single user mode, the disk mounts as read-only. You have to make it writeable in order to do anything to it. I forget the actual command but it displays on the monitor nearby where it gives the "fsck" command syntax when you first boot into it. It's something like "mount -uw /" or something to that effect. It is saying to mount the root drive ("/") with user write privileges.
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hello.
i have a problem with my USB-Stick. since i gave it to a friend it does no longer work. unix says it is a "READ-ONLY FILESYSTEM". anny sugestions how i could change that?
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It's a long shot, but what happens when you launch Terminal and type
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sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/{usbStickName}
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I am having issues with a brand new firewire external drive and I am not sure if it is a drive issue, a configuration issue or what.
I have a 6tb Firewire hooked up to my machine. This is the drive which is being used as the destination for Time Machine. I have had this drive for awhile and seem to be having no problem with it and have not had an issue with Time Machine previously. I have a new added a second firewire drive (2tb) in daisy chain to the first (the 6tb). Whenever this drive is included in my TM backup profile, TM fails. Whenever I remove it, TM seems to work. I am wondering if the issue is the sequence of the drives (the TM drive perhaps needing to be the last in the chain), an issue with TM or perhaps an indication of a hardware problem with the new drive itself. Anyone got a clue?
Thanks.

Okay,apparantly no one else seems to be having this issue. That being the case then, how do I find a log file to get an error code so I can try to determine *why* Time Machine is failing?

Sharing a Firewire external drive over Ethernet

Sorry, this should be in the "Networking" forum, BUT IT DOESN'T SEEM TO EXIST. . .
Have 500GB Firewire external drive hooked to G5 for backup. Just want to have it mount our other Mac's desktop so they can also use it over the network for backup. I CANNOT find ANY WAY to do this glaringly obvious desired feature within OSX!!!
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Thanks!

Sorry, this should be in the "Networking" forum, BUT IT DOESN'T SEEM TO EXIST. . .
Have 500GB Firewire external drive hooked to G5 for backup. Just want to have it mount our other Mac's desktop so they can also use it over the network for backup. I CANNOT find ANY WAY to do this glaringly obvious desired feature within OSX!!!
WHY isn't there a "Share this Drive on the Network" checkbox in "Get Info"? So you could easily share any USB or Firewire storage device instantly!
Thanks!

Pacstrap failed. Now I have a read-only filesystem that is unusable

Hello,
I have been using Linux for the past few years (primarily Ubuntu and Fedora), and have used the command line a lot.
I was just following the instructions on the Beginners guide. I set up wifi, and partitioned the disk using gdisk (all my computers since late 2009 have not used MBR). I then set up my mirrorlist (left the first one, and added my university as second).
When I ran pacstrap (without -i), it started downloading everything. I think it finished most of it. The kernel had been downloaded, and the filesystem supposedly set up. Then, I got an error. (I am not sure where it was, and I wasn't logging the output. There were many many lines of:
[timestamp] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_da_writepages: jpd2_start:8192 pages, ino xxxxxxx; err -30
Then:
[timestamp] EXT4-fs error (device sda1): ext4_journal_start_sb:370: [timestamp] EXT4-fs error (device sda1): ext4_journal_start_sb:370: [timestamp] EXT4-fs error (device sda1): Remounting filesystem read-only
error: command failed to execute correctly
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error: could not commit transaction
error: failed to commit transaction (transaction aborted)
Errors occured, no packages were upgraded.
warning: could not remove lock file /mnt/var/lib/pacman/db.lck
==> ERROR: Failed to install packages to new root
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel 35.27s user 6.19s system 3% cpu 17:34.81 total
Trying to rerun pacstrap gets me an error that the lockfile still exists. I cannot remove it because it is a "read-only filesystem". Its permissions are 000, and the folder it is in (pacman) has 755.
I also cannot make an fstab or continue with the installation.
I tried to run the setup again, and it kept failing. (MBR failed too, with the same error.)
What do you think caused it, and what could I do to resolve it. I couldn't find anything like that in the forums, or on google.
Last edited by masasin (2012-10-27 03:18:37)

Are the ext4 errors not a dead giveaway that the FS (or physical disk) are misbehaving? It's remounted itself read-only to prevent further damage.

[SOLVED] Root mounted as "Read-only filesystem". mkinitcpio issue?

I am currently in the middle of setting up system encryption with LUKS. I have been making good progress so far, but I do have one remaining issue.
After typing my LUKS password, the Linux kernel starts to complain that root is a read-only filesystem. "Starting NetworkManager... cannot touch file XYZ: Read-only filesystem". When it has finally finished booting, I am dropped into a TTY. I can log in and cat my files, but I cannot write to any files our use any programs that do (like pacman).
I wonder if this is an mkinitcpio issue, but I am not sure. For whatever it's worth, here's my basic setup:
* /dev/sda1: Boot
* /dev/sda2: Swap
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* menu.lst looks like this
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/dev/mapper/root / ext4 defaults 0 1
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MODULES="ext4"
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Last edited by jalu (2011-04-16 22:14:20)

So it looks like this major problem was caused by a minor mistake. The file /etc/rc.sysinit was not executable. This made it impossible for the kernel to run the script, which in turn made it impossible for the kernel to mount /dev/sda2 (the swap partition) at /dev/mapper/swap. For some unknown reason, this in turn caused /dev/sda2 to be mounted at /, messing everything up.
Anyway, a simple sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.sysinit fixed the problem. Thanks for the help, MadTux!

FireWire External Drive - Read Only Filesystem

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