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)

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I installed it and got this error : now my Macbook wont even see the flash drive...

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.
That said, now that we know that yours doesn't have a write-lock switch, maybe you could try this:
It's a long shot, but what happens when you launch Terminal and type
ls -ld /Volumes/{usbStickName}?
If the permissions are not drwxrwxrwx, then, perhaps, from an admin-privileged account, you could
sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/{usbStickName}
and with any luck, you will have write privileges again.
Something to try....no guarantees....
Short of that, you may be giving your friend a slightly used usb flash drive as a Christmas present.
(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")

Install on SDCard/USB stick, toggle read-only filesystem - possible?

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Comment on the "why" for Flash Device....quiet operation, less power required, faster performance and reduced size.
Faster boot time is also possible with raid applied.
As previously stated, running all in ram doesn't provide any performance improvement if the system has at least 2GB of ram. Thus the use of swap is not required with that much ram.
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.
Copy- on- write is also proposed for flash devices which reduces the process steps for writing to flash.
In my experience with running-in-ram with CTKArch "live" system, I found not much to endorse using that mode. A negative of good proportion is the copy-to-ram loading time , which cannot be avoided.
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.
My raid0 bootable system was outlined in previous post and am using it now. It is not a USB connected bus arrangement which inherently limits performance.
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.

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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
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rm: test.file: Read-only file system
If I try to write a file I get:
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The volume DATA appears to be OK.
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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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I'd make a sound too if i was put into a bag haha.
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jfoppes wrote:
… can i format the flahs drive insuch a way a way that prevents copying?
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Hello Stedman:
I am pretty sure that these files were not open in MS Word when I tried to copy them.
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[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...

USB Flash Drive: Read-only filesystem

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