[Solved] Read-Only mounting of USB drives

Hello all,
This issue has been raised in many threads, but still I am unable to sort it out!
My USB drives (pen drive/ Hard Disk) are always mounted in read-only mode. These are in VFAT filesystem, so I dont think ntfs-3g is needed. But I installed that anyways.
I also tried with disabling auto mounting in dconf-editor and keeping a rule file under /etc/udev/rules.d/ as mentioned in the wiki.
Still no luck.
Any ideas ?
Thanks!
Last edited by gagan_mishra (2012-03-03 19:11:09)

This is the output :
/dev/sda1 on /media/2004CEA904CE80F0 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096)
/dev/sdc1 on /media/ARCH_201108 type udf (ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=77,iocharset=utf8,uhelper=udisks)
Here /dev/sdc1 is the USB drive. As you can see, its mounted as 'ro' (read only).
Thanks!

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[SOLVED]failure to mount external usb drive, possible hardware malfu

Please excuse me for posting this in the Arch forums, but I'd appreciate at least a point in the right direction. Every Google hit I came up with had a dubious solution like "reinstall USB drivers". I've never had an external drive fail on me yet, and I think this might be a sign of one. I recently moved and set up a 750gb WD external drive connected to this laptop running Arch and WinXP. Drive was working fine until this morning. I see it's entry in Thunar, but when I try to mount it:
Failed to mount "xxx".
WARNING: Couldn't set locale to 'en_PH.utf8' thus some file names may not
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http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html#unprivileged.
I got an entirely different error msg in Arch before, suggesting a chkdsk but I don't remember beyond that.
In Windows, I get USB device not recognized. I've tried turning the thing off and back on, making sure it's connected and swiping cables, rebooting Arch, nothing. Is it fried? Also, how does one even run a chkdsk on a drive that can't be mounted in Windows?
Thanks for the assistance.
Last edited by elephantos (2008-07-11 04:59:28)

Thunar is saying it's a permission problem... have you tried manually mounting it?

Mounting my USB drive without being root

Hi,
I would like to mount my USB drive without being super-user.
The command I run for mounting the drive is :
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbflash

relevant options in /etc/fstab
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# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
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USB drive only mounts as Local Drive Need it to mount as USB Drive to create recovery drive

subject pretty much says it all. Using an HP Sleekbook 15, it tells me to make recovery disk. I opt for the USB drive option and buy a new Sandisk Cruze Glide. Plugged it in. Started Recovery program to make disk. Program tells me to insert the USB drive or plugin my DVD burner. I check the file explorer and find the USB drive is mounted as Local Drive E:. No amount of inserting and removal will trigger the program to continue.
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Not all USB 3.0 is Windows 8 compatible. It will have the compability logo on the back or front of the package.
I have run across several interesting articles that mention Windows 8 can create the Recovery Drive with I assume any flash drive.
http://lifehacker.com/5991431/how-to-create-a-recovery-flash-drive-for-windows-8-and-free-up-some-ha...
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/create-a-recovery-drive-in-windows-8/7261
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Cannot mount external USB drive with FDisk_partition_scheme

Due to some recent mac issues in my lab, we updated one of the computers to Maverick 10.9.4 from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 yesterday. Anyhow, this seems to have erased the ability of the mac to read or mount several identical USB drives with the NTFS format (WD My Passport Ultra 500GB USB3.0). It could do it yesterday when it was OSX 10.6.8, but not today (OSX 10.9.4). The drives still work fine on other OSX 10.6.8, Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04 computers (this is appears to be a problem with the Maverick 10.9.4 operating system itself, rather than the flash drives which work flawlessly with every other computer I've tried). I want to remove data from the computer to create backups on the USB drives (no, I don't want to create an online backup or buy a new set of USB drives).
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I could reformat one USB drive and then copy to the others, but this would be extremely inconvenient and take days of copying files back and forth (and would prefer to fix the mac rather than go through this with every NTFS drive I own). If I did this, the FAT32 hard drive format would not be suitable, as format is unable to handle the extremely large sequencing datasets I need to transfer. I'm not super familiar with hard drive formats, but in the event we cannot get Maverick to actually work could someone possibly suggest a format able to handle large file sizes (the largest file I need to move is ~60GB) and be compatible with Windows 8.1 / OSX 10.9.4 / Ubuntu 14.04 as well?
Another workaround I thought of would be just to install an Ubuntu partition on the mac and get the files off through the Linux install. Which is also inconvenient, but would probably be faster than trying to reformat the drives and copy everything over onto them again given the amount of data I want to transfer.
Unrelated, but is there any way to view files and folders in the OSX root directory besides through Terminal? It seems like this functionality was also removed when we "upgraded" from Snow Leopard. (At this point, if it were up to me I would wipe all of the macs we own and replace them with Ubuntu... even the most minor of tasks always require some sort of workaround with them... at my wits end here ).

Yeah this definitely appears to be a problem specifically with this mac. It's been having all sorts of weird problems lately, and we figured that upgrading to Maverick might fix them (but instead we got new problems).
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Time Machine "read-only" error across multiple drives

Hello,
I've been having an ongoing problem for more than a year now. I continually get a "read-only" error message from Time Machine. To be specific, the message is: "Time Machine could not complete the backup. Files can’t be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only. You may need to repair or reformat the disk using Disk Utility. If the disk can’t be repaired, you must use a different disk for backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a different backup disk."
The problem is, this has happened with three separate backup drives. They are all G-Tech 2TB 4th Generation G-Drive external hard drives. So I'm wondering if there may be a Mac OS software problem, or perhaps a hardware problem.
There's a lot to this story, so if you're game, read on.
First, about a year ago, I noticed that my Mac Pro frequently spontaneously ejected the backup drive, for no apparent reason. I didn't deal with the problem right away because I was having other, pressing troubles with my display (which took forever to solve).
In early-mid 2013, I tried a few disk repairs of my backup disk, as well as erasing the disk (and correctly formatting as Mac OS Extended Journaled). The disk was failing to mount at that point, so G-Tech sent me a replacement drive (a refurbished drive of exactly the same type).
With the replacement drive, I was getting the same "read-only" message. So I tried a few times erasing/reformatting/repartitioning this drive. No luck.
So I was sent yet another replacement drive. I experienced the same problems, and in addtion, I once got a message saying the backup drive was full when it actually wasn't. So I tried a) using a different firewire cable, b) using this different cable on a different port. Same problems.
In the meantime, I did some backups with an old Glyph drive, using the same FW800 port, and the same cable (the 2nd cable), and I had no problems. The reason I don't use this Glyph drive as my normal backup drive is that it is only 500 GB and not large enough to back up all three of my MP internal drives.
A couple other items of note: back in August of 2013, one of my MP's internal hard drives had to be replaced (it was determined to be having multiple input/output errors). Also, I've had a intermittent problem with the MP spontaneoulsy ejecting a couple different Lexar USB flash drives, even after I reformatted them repeatedly (but this has never happened with my ADATA flash drives). I suppose these things may be unrelated, but for the sake of completeness, I thought I'd include them.
So it seems like maybe it's a compatibility issue the G-Tech Drives? I'd be surprised...but I'm stumped. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks.

Hello,
I've been having an ongoing problem for more than a year now. I continually get a "read-only" error message from Time Machine. To be specific, the message is: "Time Machine could not complete the backup. Files can’t be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only. You may need to repair or reformat the disk using Disk Utility. If the disk can’t be repaired, you must use a different disk for backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a different backup disk."
The problem is, this has happened with three separate backup drives. They are all G-Tech 2TB 4th Generation G-Drive external hard drives. So I'm wondering if there may be a Mac OS software problem, or perhaps a hardware problem.
There's a lot to this story, so if you're game, read on.
First, about a year ago, I noticed that my Mac Pro frequently spontaneously ejected the backup drive, for no apparent reason. I didn't deal with the problem right away because I was having other, pressing troubles with my display (which took forever to solve).
In early-mid 2013, I tried a few disk repairs of my backup disk, as well as erasing the disk (and correctly formatting as Mac OS Extended Journaled). The disk was failing to mount at that point, so G-Tech sent me a replacement drive (a refurbished drive of exactly the same type).
With the replacement drive, I was getting the same "read-only" message. So I tried a few times erasing/reformatting/repartitioning this drive. No luck.
So I was sent yet another replacement drive. I experienced the same problems, and in addtion, I once got a message saying the backup drive was full when it actually wasn't. So I tried a) using a different firewire cable, b) using this different cable on a different port. Same problems.
In the meantime, I did some backups with an old Glyph drive, using the same FW800 port, and the same cable (the 2nd cable), and I had no problems. The reason I don't use this Glyph drive as my normal backup drive is that it is only 500 GB and not large enough to back up all three of my MP internal drives.
A couple other items of note: back in August of 2013, one of my MP's internal hard drives had to be replaced (it was determined to be having multiple input/output errors). Also, I've had a intermittent problem with the MP spontaneoulsy ejecting a couple different Lexar USB flash drives, even after I reformatted them repeatedly (but this has never happened with my ADATA flash drives). I suppose these things may be unrelated, but for the sake of completeness, I thought I'd include them.
So it seems like maybe it's a compatibility issue the G-Tech Drives? I'd be surprised...but I'm stumped. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks.

Will only support one USB drive at a time

Background
This is happening with a Mid 2007 Mini, OS X 10.7.4.
I use this Mini soley as an iTunes music server. The OS is on the internal drive. Music is on a separate drive, as is Time Machine. No keyboard is connected. I do all maintence wirelessly via screen sharing from another Mac.
Recently I changed the drives from conventional ext. FW hard drives to ext USB SSD. The USB enclosures are USB2/3 "Hornet" brand. The SSDs are Samsung 256GB 830s.
The Problem
Only one USB drive will stay mounted at a time. Both drives will initially mount but once one is put into use, i.e., play a song or start a Time Machine update, the other drive will unmount and I get the nasty "You disconnected your USB drive improperly...." I've seen the threads on USB drives randomly unmounting. This is not that issue. My drives do not randomly unmount; one will unmount as soon as the other is in use. (The unmounted drive stays unmounted. It does not remount when the other drive is no longer in use).
The drives came with USB cables that had dual ends, one for data/power the other power only. The problem occurs regardless of whether I use just the data/power or both.
My initial thoughts are:
1) It's a power issue and the Mini can't support the power requirements of both drives simulateously. I need an A/C adapter.
2) It's an incompatible enclosure (even though it said Mac compatible, who knows if it was actually tested and not just presumed).
3) Crappy cables.
The Question
Since testing any of these hypothesis will cost me $ (and time to buy -- and return if unsuccesful) I'm hoping someone here has experienced something similar to guide me to the fix a bit quicker. Am I close here, or could it be something else?

I believe Bus powered drives are for the birds, & more often a problem on Macs than PCs, get a good AC powered USB hub... or two.

Ipod will only mount through USB

could anyone please tell me why my ipod will only mount and update with the USB cable, and not the firewire as it used to. it won't mount on the desktop or the new laptop (c/w Tiger) this way but seems fine through USB. Is using the USB a one way road?

... not sure. I have had trouble before. Turned out to be a "bad" firewire port. Others have reported that switching Firewire cables helped.
We can either try to figure it out ... or we could suggest uyou just reset everything. The latter is often easier.
This is in order of difficulty, I think:
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2. Check the iPod directory - with your ipod disconnected, open iTunes and set the iPod preference tab to Manual. Quit iTunes, connect your iPod, and if iTunes opens, quit it again. Open Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities folder). iPod should show up in list of drives on the left. Select the iPod and click "Repair".
3. Delete the iPodDriver.kext file:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61937
4. Since you have a back-up of your music, open Updater and Restore your iPod - this will reformat it so your music (on the iPod) will be lost. It will be replaced when you resync it with iTunes.
5. Reset your USB and Firewire ports - you might run a check to see if you get the same behavior using a different port. To reset the ports, go here:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?7@@.68bb75ef/0
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Hal 0.5.14-1 does not mount some usb drives correctly

Hi folks
When I try to mount a USB hard disk (with KDE 4.3.4), it tries to mount it at some wrong path used by another USB hard disk. Or I have to mount it as root, or even as root it still doesn't work right... pfff I'm really disappointed by this showstopper...
For example, I own a LaCie hard disk (/media/disk), a Iomega one (/media/IOMEGA) and a LaCie mobile disk (no power cable, /media/MobileDisk):
- When I try to mount the Iomega one, it works fine, as normal user;
- When I try to mount the LaCie one, it fails, independently of the fact that the Iomega drive is mounted or not, with the following message:
Unable to run the command specified. The file or folder file:///media/IOMEGA does not exist.
Looks like it wants to mount the LaCie one where the Iomega one is/should be mounted...
- When I connect the LaCie hard disk, the directory /media/MobileDisk
is created, instead of /media/disk
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ntfs-3g: Failed to access volume '/dev/sdb1': No such file or directory
Maybe there's some erroneous entry in some cache or data used by hal/dbus? I don't know how they work and how to activate their logging systems and then where to find the logs...
Maybe there's a way to simply completely wipe out hal/dbus/consolekit/policykit/... configuration data without having to reinstall the complete system?
I have:
hal 0.5.14-1
dbus-core 1.2.16-1
dbus 1.2.16-1
dbus-glib 0.82-2
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I start KDM using /etc/inittab, as described in the wiki. I've put "/usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon" in /etc/rc.local and have modified /etc/inittab so that it starts kdm with: "x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/ck-launch-session /usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon"!
Is this the right setup, equivalent to the one with xinitrc?
The same setup works fine on my laptop.
I've got the impression that hal/dbus/... confounds my drives and does not know where to mount them...
Downgrading to hal 0.5.13-idontrememberwhatcifer does not solve the issue, the system is kept up to date with "pacman -Syu" about once a day and it still doesn't work...
Some clue?
Thanks and happy new year

OK something happened that I can't explain...
I just controlled about all files related to hal/dbus/mounting etc and, I don't know why, all devices I've mounted had a corresponding line in fstab... really weird.
I juste deleted those lines, and, well, mounting seems to work again
So this issue is solved
And finally Arch Linux is again my favorite distro
Last edited by yannick555 (2010-01-03 14:37:55)

Auto run workflow, upon mounting of USB drive

Hi,
I am trying to create a workflow, that copies all the files for my Dissertation to a folder on a USB drive.
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Simon

you can use a launch daemon set to be triggered when you mount a disk.
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[SOLVED] read only filesystem prevents login

Hi everyone.
I have this problem after changing from initscript to systemd and adding an external ntfs-3g drive to /etc/fstab. when i log in i get this message and xfce4 doesnt start :
-bash: /home/bb/.xlog : read-only file system
ls -la /
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i also tried
#mount -o remount,rw /dev/sda4 /
with no results.
when i try to change /etc/fstab entries i get an error message saying that system is read-only...
chmod and chown dont work either with the same error message
how am i supposed to change something in a read-only system?
Last edited by memax (2012-11-15 17:39:45)

i ve not removed 'ro' from booting cmd and / is mounted with rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1 in /etc/fstab as options

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Hello,
Is it possible to create a snapshot of a volume that is mounted read only ?
My guess is that it isn't...
Here is the scenario.
I have a mail server who's primary /mail parition is a volume on our new iSCSI SAN.
I have a backup server who mounts the same SAN volume read only.
I want to let the backup server backup that /mail volume to another volume, or to tape however...
In the past, when I attempt to perform a regular ufsdump w/o any fssnap I often run into errors and the dump is inconsistent.
DUMP: bread: dev_seek error: Error 0
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I'm finding this to still be the case, even though the volume is on the SAN and is mounted read only.
Are those errors indicitative of a major problem or are they simply due to the fact that the volume is actively being written to and read from?
From the mail server, when I run ufsdump after running fssnap on the /mail volume, I don't see these errors, however the load on the mail server severely increases to the point where users begin to experience problems and slowdowns.
From the backup server, if I can fssnap that read-only /mail SAN /volume then perhaps I can get reliable backups?
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Thanks,
--Raf

Here is a process I use all the time. And Yes you can fssnap a live system.
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http://solaris-x86.org/documents/tutorials/jsrestore.mhtml

Cant mount the USB drive to desktop

Please help - I am trying to get the attached disk drive to display on my iMac.
I can see the drive in the Airport Utility but cannot connect to it at all.
I have rebooted, reverted to V7.4.1 etc. but still nothing!
Going crazy here

Hi,
From what I'm reading, you are connecting your HD to your AirPort Extreme and it is not showing up. Are you looking on your desktop? Did you look in finder, when I do network sharing with my Mac it shows up in finder. In the left column under the HD section or in Network section. If it is in the Network section then I have to click the connect button
Also is this a drive you have connected directly to your Mac before? If not try to connect it. If this works then the drive should work in the router. Also most new USB drives are formatted in NTFS. If your drive can't be written to connected to your Mac then it's formated in NTFS or anther format that Mac doesn't support.
Just reformat it
I hope this was helpful.
Message was edited by: bitlord
Message was edited by: bitlord

[Solved] Read-Only mounting of USB drives

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