UDF USB Read Only

Hi,
I purchased a recovery USB from Lenovo for my ThinkPad (out of warranty, had to pay). They sent me a Microsoft branded USB stick preloaded with Windows 8. It is formatted as UDF and served its purpose in restoring my ThinkPad. When inserted into a PC it
shows as being a DVD rather than a USB drive. Instead of just binning the drive or leaving it in a drawer, I figured I'd just format it and use it as a "normal" USB stick. However, Windows 8.1 turns round and says "Windows can't format this
type of disk. Insert a different disk and try again". I have checked if it is read only in the registry and the StorageDevicePolicies>WriteProtect DWORD is set to 0 as well as Diskpart showing it as readonly: no.
I have taken the casing off the USB to see if there was an onboard write protect switch and there isn't but windows says it can't right to it as it is write protected.
I'm stuck as to how to format this drive. Tried using the dd command in Ubuntu, Disk Utility in OS X and command line in Windows (as well as the obligatory Right-Click > Format). I have also resorted to booting in safe mode with a command line and trying
to format from there but it says it cannot gain access to the drive. Clearing the attributes in Diskpart says it doesn't work on removable media.
Any suggestions on where I can proceed from here would be most welcome.
Kind Regards,
Mike

Hi Mike,
Have you tried to "boot from USB" (set in BIOS) to boot from the USB stick for recover your system?
I believe it is intended to prevent from editing/formatting the disk as it needs to protect the data on that stick. Just try to boot from it to see if recovery could be performed.
If you still cannot find a way to perform the recover, you should contact Lenovo for a manual.
If you have any feedback on our support, please send to [email protected]

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[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!
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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.
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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)
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Install on SDCard/USB stick, toggle read-only filesystem - possible?

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This principle also applies to Flash Devices which have algortithms controlling the writes across the entire card capacity such that larger capacity increases lifetime expectancy.
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Basically, faster ram is the best approach for performance enhancement in all systems.
Thus, there are herein some reasons for using flash in an arch booting system whether "live" or conventional or raid based.
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I find Compact Flash in UDMA or true IDE mode to provide good performance speed of 90mb/s read and 25mb/s write to be a fine alternative to hard drives. In raid0 read speed is doubled. Good reason for flash devices but not in usb mode.

USB flash storage mounted as read-only filesystem

Hello all,
I'm new to Arch Linux and trying to migrate all my works to arch. Installed KDE, GNOME3, and hardware drivers successfully But I have problems with USB flash disks. When plugging a usb device, system mounts it as a readonly filesystem. so I can't change its contents. It always happens to my flash disk, but flash disk of my friend is ok!
I tried to mount manually with super user access, but no hope. It says:
[root@myhost soroush]# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/
mount: warning: /mnt/ seems to be mounted read-only.

roygbiv wrote:Maybe you can post your /etc/fstab?
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sda2 / ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda4 swap swap defaults 0 0

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/*
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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.
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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)

Usb stick is "READ ONLY FILESYSTEM"

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?
it was not possible to reformat it by disk utility. i also tried to format it on a windows machine - didn´t work... any ideas?
best reagards
sepoe

Monkeymeetsrobot's suggestion is the first thing I would have suggested myself -- your original post made no mention of no write-lock switch -- many flash drives have them -- one of mine does and when locked would exhibit that behavior and the other one that doesn't, it still works properly.
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It's a long shot, but what happens when you launch Terminal and type
ls -ld /Volumes/{usbStickName}?
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sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/{usbStickName}
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(if this solves your problem, or is actually helpful towards arriving at a solution to your problem, please consider marking this reply as "helpful" or "solved," in addition to, if applicable, marking this question as "answered")

I am connecting an external USB HDD and I can see it on my Apple Macbook Air. BUT this drive is READ only. How can I write to it?

I am connecting an external USB HDD and I can see it on my Apple Macbook Air. BUT this drive is READ only. How can I write to it?

Drive Partition and Format
1.Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

How to attach an external USB drive read-only

I would like to hook up an external USB hard drive and would like to do so in such a manner as to ensure that absolutely nothing is modified on the drive at all. Is there some way I can specify this before I connect the drive or while I plug it in? (e.g. hold down the shift key or something like that.) I have found all sorts of posts from folks who wanted to know how to turn off read-only mode, but haven't had much luck finding out how to turn it on.
I noticed recently when I plugged in a USB stick that it sat and blinked for some time. I'm guessing that OS X was busy indexing the drive. I'm not sure if the index was written back to the USB stick, or cached somewhere locally. If it was written back to the USB stick, I would like to prevent this from happening when I plug in a real drive.
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--wpd

If the drive is formatted NTFS, it will automatically mount read-only. If it is formatted HFS+ or FAT, I don't know of any way to external drives to mount read-only without installing OS X Server for $500.

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)

USB Stick unrecognized/read only after Gparted

Hi
I partitioned a brand new USB thumb drive with Gparted and then installed Fedora LiveOS on it. This was just a test as I really wanted to use Larch to get Arch on the stick. So I tried to repartitioned it again. But Gaparted now complains that the stick is read only and so does not change anything.
I then moved to fdisk. fdisk will allow me to look at the partitions and will even change them. But after using Fdisk to repartition and then running mkfs.whatever-i-want the partitions can not be mounted. Even dd exits with a read only drive error.
Fdisk can manipulate the partitions but it complains that DOS mode is not supported and asks me to give the c and u commands. Despite this the drive is not recognised when I plug it into the computer.
After using fdisk on the drive several times, gparted now claims that there is no valid partition table on the drive and so shows only unallocated space. But it still won't write any partition info to the device, claiming its read only!
I'm stumped! Anybody have a clue how to get around this?
emk

dd fails with an input/output error after writing 17MB. This is an 8GB stick. Fdisk shows no partitions. But is unable to write to the drive after I create partitions. Here is the output.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
dd: writing to `/dev/sdb': Input/output error
32969+0 records in
32968+0 records out
16879616 bytes (17 MB) copied, 217.003 s, 77.8 kB/s
Output of dmesg when I plug in the drive
usb 4-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi2 : usb-storage 4-1:1.0
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access HP v115w 1100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 15663104 512-byte logical blocks: (8.01 GB/7.46 GiB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
So far this looks OK. I had earlier deleted my initial 2 partitions and created one vfat partition on the drive. But then when I try to mount the drive and to repartition with fdisk dmesg gives the following:
EXT4-fs (sdb1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
EXT2-fs (sdb1): error: can't find an ext2 filesystem on dev sdb1.
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x7 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x27 ASCQ=0x0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 00 00 10 70 00 00 f0 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 4208
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 526
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 527
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 528
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 529
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 530
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 531
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 532
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 533
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 534
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 535
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x7 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x27 ASCQ=0x0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 00 00 11 60 00 00 f0 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 4448
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is on
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 80 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x7 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x27 ASCQ=0x0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 00 00 80 c0 00 00 08 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 32960
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: unknown partition table
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
I don't have any ext4 partitions on it. THere should only be vfat. My initial partitions were ext3 and vfat. I then switched the ext3 to ext2 after the problems begun and finally just went with a big vfat. I initially used gparted on the drive so as to label the partitions. I really feel that gparted may be the culprit here but I have no proof. This is a brand new stick that had not been written to before.
And from gparted:
libparted : 2.3
======================
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
/dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label
[1]+ Done gparted
emk
Last edited by emk (2010-07-25 00:02:50)

Security: Read-only for USB and FireWire

Is there a way to secure the external data ports on a Mac so you can't write to a USB and/or FireWire drive? Obviously we need the SATA / InternalHD to be regular read/write. I've swapped out the optical drive so it is a read-only device, but it would be nice to have a solution that prevents writing to optical media as well.

I found two links that provide a solution.
http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/TigerSecurity_Config021507.pdf
http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/LeopardSecurity_Config20080530.pdf
I can't find the page(s) that reference these PDFs, so you have to download them directly.
Within the two documents are information about "removing support for mass storage devices" by trashing certain files (IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext for USB and IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext for FireWire).
One caveat seems to be that these files may be restored through system updates, so you need to write a login script (script provided in Leopard PDF) to ensure they are removed or simply be aware of the issue when installing system updates.

Make UDF Read-only for all users

Hi
Can i use any script to make a UDF read-only for all users?
i am looking at CPRF and CUFD Tables
thanks

Hi,
You should never try updating system table directly. That will against supporting policy by SAP.
Thanks,
Gordon

Make USB mount read only.

Hello again,
I am looking to make any USB mounted devices read only by default. Is there a way to do this in Leopard?

Greetings,
While you can make a USB device read only, you can't make a port read only. There are ways to disable a USB port, but that's about it.
You can also use a OS X Server and with it, you can deny access to the device, but to make it (the port) read only, I don't think that's possible with any OS. You could mark the internal hard drives read only, as well, but that would be a major pain.
I have hundreds of machines, and the open labs are the only ones I disallow the use of USB devices for security reasons, PeeCee or Mac. Using the OS X Server, we can apply restrictions, as I do with Active Directory for the PeeCees.
Cheers,
M.

10.5.2 mount USB-Drive read only while booting

Hi,
since the update to 10.5.2 my usb drive is always mounted read only if it is connected while booting.
If I connect it after booting or unmount and remount it after booting everything works fine.
Any ideas?
thx
Bapf
Message was edited by: Bapf

strangely enogh ... the last two boots it worked again
I hope it stays that way

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.

UDF USB Read Only

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