While copying some large file I mistakenly taken out USB pen drive before the copy get completed. Later I again attached the USB pen drive in Ubuntu system but found that the USB pen drive showing read only filesystem message. I was not able to copy, create and delete any file. To solve this issue I followed some steps which I am sharing in this article.
Table of Contents
Method Of Fixing Read Only USB Pen Drive In Ubuntu
In this section, we will follow the steps to fix the read only USB Pen Drive.
Disclaimer
- Some of you might be carrying the important data in USB / Pen Drive. In this method, we will format the USB drive. So due to this , the data will be erased and non recoverable.
- This solution works most of the time but in case there is Hardware issue in your USB/Pen drive then this solution won’t work. You should buy new USB/ Pen drive instead.
Find Out The Mounted Path Of USB Pen Drive
Step 1: Attach USB pen drive in system’s USB port. Automatically the Ubuntu will mount the USB pen drive and show icon on Desktop or Menu bar.
Open the terminal and become super user by running below given command
sudo su -
Step 2: First we have to find out in which directory the USB pen drive has been automatically mounted.For this run the df -Th
command.
In given below output you can see,in my system the USB pen drive is mounted in /media/linux/C38C-099C ,partition is /dev/sdd1 and filesystem is vfat.
Note: When you run df -Th
command in your system,the USB pen drive may mount in different directory and the partition might also be different.Hence the output value which you will get, use the same values in further steps.
root@tuxworld:~# df -Th Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 ext4 28G 25G 1.3G 96% / udev devtmpfs 2.0G 4.0K 2.0G 1% /dev tmpfs tmpfs 796M 1.1M 795M 1% /run none tmpfs 5.0M 8.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock none tmpfs 2.0G 528K 2.0G 1% /run/shm none tmpfs 100M 104K 100M 1% /run/user cgroup tmpfs 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/sda7 ext4 9.2G 8.2G 539M 94% /partition7 /dev/sda8 ext3 46G 38G 6.2G 86% /partition8 /dev/sda9 ext3 74G 67G 3.1G 96% /partition9 /dev/sda21 ext4 14G 4.9G 8.3G 37% /partition10 /dev/sdd1 vfat 15G 12G 3.6G 77% /media/linux/C38C-099C
Unmount USB Pen Drive
Step 2: Now unmount the directory in which the USB pen drive is automatically mounted . (As you can see mounted directory path in above ‘Step 1’)
Note: Replace the/media/linux/C38C-099C with the mounted USB pen drive directory path which is showing output in your system after running df -Th
command.
umount /media/linux/C38C-099C
Check And Repair
Step 3: As we know the USB pen drive got /dev/sdd1 partition
and filesystem is vfat(see in Step 1). Now we will run dosfsck command to check and repair the filesystem
Note: The dosfsck
command check and repair MS-DOS filesystems.Because the filesystem of USB pen drive is vfat hence we are using this command
dosfsck -a /dev/sdd1
Re-Attach USB Pen Drive
Step 4: After the dosfsck command get completed.Remove the USB pen drive from system and then re-attach back to system.Now your USB pen drive should working and it should not have read only filesystem.
Note** After mounting the USB pen drive you may see a new file with extension .REC which was created because of dosfsck command.
Reboot The System
Step 5 Reboot the system after completing all the steps. (This step we have added after receiving lots of suggestion in comments section from our readers around the world. Thank you for providing feedback and sure it will help many people.)
Nope, still read only:
root@XXXXX:/media/jmp# umount /media/jmp/CARMUSIC
root@XXXXX:/media/jmp# dosfsck -a /dev/sda1
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system
I have try that command but my usb is not repair?
It show that open: Read-only file system
I have try that command but my usb is not repair?
Thanks for sharing the detail information.
Regards
Sharad
Thanks for the clear concise instructions. I had a USB Hard drive which became read only and is now reporting read/write. My rsync backup command has worked again. I suspect that the drive was not cleanly removed. When I looked at the contents of the drive after completing the steps here there were a fairly large number of fsc files which I deleted as I knew I was going to run rsync and the recovered or orphan files were not of interest to me. Again, thank you for putting this info out there. Best wishes.
Yes, Data will be removed.
Hi, will this wipe the drive & existing data?
Cheers
Does this erase the contents?
This solution didn’t work for me, after running dosfsck – a… On my unmounted USB drive this resulted:
“fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system”
root@Joao:~# dosfsck -a /dev/sdg1
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system
root@Joao:~#
I get this error on step 3.
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb
fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
Currently, only 1 or 2 FATs are supported, not 0.
Thank you James! I am glad many of our readers are able to overcome from this problem.
I’ve had USB “read only” problems twice. No one had a solution. I used this fix and it worked great.
use as
sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdd1
when I run dosfsck -a /dev/sdd1
this is giving as permission denied
It worked on my Kingston DTSE9 16 gb. Thank you very much.
Cheers man, much appreciated.
I am sorry for my error reported. Today, after two trying to apply your method, my external USB harddisk is, again, writeable. Thank You, SharadChettri!
Respectfully,
Corneliu Florea
Same problem. My Harrdisk remains read-only. At vfat partition veryifing, appears one bit to hide / eliminate..
this worked perfect with my USB 3.0 pen drive, manjaro 20.2.1 Gnome
many thanks
al_fonsius
Worked, thanks!
Doesn’t work, because the file system is read only.
dosfsck doesnt work….because it is read-only!
Doesn’t work. After following all the above steps and rebooting, my 18.04 system still reports that my USB thumb drive is a read-only file system.
maybe you do not understand what I mean here, he has entered a faulty mount command. resulting in the system trying to mount “USB” and “DISK” and these directories do not exist, right?
Hi Marcellus,
The mount path should be used which is showing on your system. Check once!
Regards
Sharad
I used it so far and it works always 🙂
Regards
Sharad
Worked perfectly. Thanks.
Are you sure switching to root succeeded? when I switch to root, the prompt changes to ‘root@systemname#” if not, just try sudo before the commands and not use sudo su, sometimes this helps. also, be sure to check if the device really unmounted
are you sure umount command succeeded?
didn’t you read the response from your system?
umount /media/mike/USB DISK
umount: /media/mike/USB: no mount point specified.
umount: DISK: no mount point specified.
that didn’t trigger a thought what could be wrong? the space between USB and DISK causes your device not to be unmounted. use “USB DISK” instead
Didn’t work: no mount point specified
Yep, worked great. Thanks.
at dosfsck -a /dev/sdd1
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system
Step 3. dosfsck fails with open: Read-only file system
Didn’t work for me. After the “dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1” command I got:
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system
no .rec file appeared, rebooting didn’t change anything
Any suggestions please?
Effectively, it only worked after rebooting the whole system! Thanks!
Have exactly this problem, but sadly this does not work. The USB flash drive is mounted as a read only file system and dosfsck -av reports nothing found but does strangely report:
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
Logical sector size is zero.
followed your instructions and read-only is still there not allowing a reformat.
tmpfs tmpfs 1.6G 236K 1.6G 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdc1 vfat 231G 4.1G 227G 2% /media/mike/USB DISK
tmpfs tmpfs 1.6G 0 1.6G 0% /run/user/0
root@mike-System-Product-Name:~#
umount /media/mike/USB DISK
umount: /media/mike/USB: no mount point specified.
umount: DISK: no mount point specified.
dosfsck -a /dev/sdc1
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
0x41: Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt.
Automatically removing dirty bit.
Free cluster summary wrong (7434982 vs. really 7433413)
Auto-correcting.
Performing changes.
/dev/sdc1: 2 files, 131073/7564486 clusters
Writing 512 bytes at 0 failed: Operation not permitted
Writing 4 bytes at 1000 failed: Operation not permitted
This is not working for me
It doesn’t even detect my usb drive at all.. 🙁
Did u found any solution on above? am too facing same issue
Thank you very much
Appreciate! Nice blog
Thank you!!
It works for me… up to now step 5 was unnecessary
It works! Step 5 is necessary.
Thank you very much. It worked! God bless you.
still getting the error after using the command
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
as fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system
Very good solution and explanation. Worked just fine for my device. Thanks!
Thanks a lot. USB drive started working after restarting my system. God bless you!
Hi Krish,
Restart the laptop and reconnect the USB flash again. Hope it may work.
Regards
Sharad
Thanks Champ! It Worked. 🙂
i cant view the contents of the flash drive now. it shows up in the terminal using ls though, but not in files. how do i fix that?
This worked for me.
Thank You very much.
root@hrsky:~# dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system
I haven’t rebooted, yet, because now the terminal says it’s got something running. The drive is gone when I do the df -Th, and when I removed it and put it back, it’s not recognized, at all! Now I have 2 drives that aren’t recognized and 1 that is still read-only. I’m glad I didn’t do that one, as well. Will take the drive to the laptop and try it. I’m running Mint 18.2, I think. Thanks for your help.
Hi Jane,
If you are looking for solution then simply follow the steps. Hope your issue will be resolved too.
Regards
Sharad
Mine says, Type: iso9660, as it is a bootable Linux installer.
Anything for that?
This didnt work for me for some reasons. I dont know why..
david@david-laptop ~ $ sudo su
[sudo] password for david:
david-laptop david # df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev devtmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 774M 18M 756M 3% /run
/dev/sda5 ext4 35G 22G 12G 65% /
tmpfs tmpfs 3.8G 112M 3.7G 3% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop2 squashfs 87M 87M 0 100% /snap/core/4407
/dev/loop0 squashfs 87M 87M 0 100% /snap/core/4486
/dev/loop3 squashfs 82M 82M 0 100% /snap/core/4206
/dev/loop1 squashfs 39M 39M 0 100% /snap/telegram-sergiusens/68
/dev/sda12 ext4 149G 58G 84G 41% /home
/dev/sda1 vfat 256M 30M 227M 12% /boot/efi
cgmfs tmpfs 100K 0 100K 0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs tmpfs 774M 44K 774M 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sda4 fuseblk 147G 35G 112G 24% /media/david/Education
/dev/sda15 fuseblk 194G 164G 31G 85% /media/david/Entertainment
/dev/sda13 fuseblk 99G 74G 25G 76% /media/david/Conference_Works
/dev/sdb1 vfat 15G 468M 15G 4% /media/david/A616-CC78
david-laptop david # umount /media/david/A616-CC78
david-laptop david # sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
open: Read-only file system
david-laptop david #
same case, any solution?
You are welcome Alexa!
Regards
Sharad
OMG thank you! The `dosfsck` command worked! But it needs to be run as sudo or root just to let you know. Gone through Google with no results that were useful until I gave your blog a shot.
You, sir/madam, are a lifesaver!
From one blogger to another, I give you a big WhoopWhoop from Texas!
Master ,
root@NLKSYS:~# umount /media/nandulal/Backup\ 1
root@NLKSYS:~# dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
open: Read-only file system
root@NLKSYS:~#
what to do ??
I readed amost replies and so said my case isnt worked. Here is the outut
root@yaohui-XPS-M1330:~# df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ubuntu–vg-root ext4 455G 393G 39G 92% /
none tmpfs 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev devtmpfs 2.0G 4.0K 2.0G 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 404M 908K 403M 1% /run
none tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none tmpfs 2.0G 160K 2.0G 1% /run/shm
none tmpfs 100M 52K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sda1 ext2 228M 197M 20M 92% /boot
/home/yaohui/.Private ecryptfs 455G 393G 39G 92% /home/yaohui
/dev/sdb1 vfat 15G 2.7G 13G 18% /media/yaohui/C69C-06B9
root@yaohui-XPS-M1330:~# umount /media/yaohui/C69C-06B9
root@yaohui-XPS-M1330:~# sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
dosfsck 3.0.14, 23 Jan 2023, FAT32, LFN
open: Read-only file system
root@yaohui-XPS-M1330:~#
Hi Admin, any workable solution?
Thank you, Sir!
It worked for me as well.
It leaves me wondering what causes this, though. I stumbled across three different problems with my external drives in the past 6 months and I’m a bit afraid of Ubuntu’s handling not always being approbiate …
Cheers to you though and thx
Robin
As usual, Linux guys always find the hardest solution. It’s really much simpler than the above suggestions. Unmount the USB drive then re-mount it. It’s really that simple.
Thanks for the extremely helpful article.
I had to repeat the process 3-4 times before it worked.
Hi,
The OS should support the filesystem type. Either it is NTFS,FAT32,VFAT whatever. Generally the USB has vfat which is supported in Linux and Windows both.
Here, dosfsck is repairing the MS-DOS filesystem. So basic understanding is here, we need to repair the filesystem of USB.
Hence, step should be .
1. Identify what type of filesystem in USB drive
2. Unmount usb drive
3. Use the repair command relevant to filesystem type.
4. Reboot the system once (not sure but our readers has experienced this too)
For NTFS repair get ntfsfix command from package called ntfs-3g
Regards
Sharad
my usb is formated as ntfs and not vfat. Would that be a reason why this solution isn’t working for me?
Welcome buddy! Rock on and be happy.
Regards
Sharad
Owwww GOD! I t Is Wooooooork Thank You.. so much Guys ..
You Really Save My Time; God Bless Your Skills.
.
.
I Bookmark Your Website …. and finally I will share this for my friends and other… Have a good day!
Worked perfectly!!! Thank you!!!
Thanks for the tip. It worked for me in ubuntu 17.10 x64
To my regret it didn’t worked for me…
root@dam-System-Product-Name:/home/dam# dosfsck -a /dev/sdc1
fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
open: Read-only file system
Also not after a reboot.
Is there another solution?
Thanks!
I really appreciate your great help. A locked memory is not worth much.
Thanks.
Oscar Dominguez
Try in this way if you do not want to rename –
umount /media/mike-casa/GMAC\ LINUX
Regards
Sharad
Hey Mosololi,
Change your USB drive name without any space. Eg. “GMAC” instead of “GMAC LINUX” then it’ll work
I cannot do step 2 because my usb label consists of two separate words so when I try to do
umount /media/mike-casa/GMAC LINUX
I get
umount: /media/mike-casa/GMAC: No such file or directory
GMAC LINUX is the label of my usb
I get this for my first step
mike-casa@mikecasa-HP-ENVY-14-Notebook-PC:~$ df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev devtmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 390M 6.3M 384M 2% /run
/dev/sda1 ext4 19G 7.8G 9.6G 45% /
tmpfs tmpfs 2.0G 292K 2.0G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs tmpfs 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop0 squashfs 80M 80M 0 100% /snap/core/2312
/dev/loop1 squashfs 81M 81M 0 100% /snap/core/2381
/dev/loop2 squashfs 80M 80M 0 100% /snap/core/1689
/dev/loop3 squashfs 91M 91M 0 100% /snap/writefull/5
/dev/sda2 ext4 193G 41G 144G 23% /home
tmpfs tmpfs 390M 80K 390M 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb1 vfat 7.5G 2.6G 4.9G 35% /media/mike-casa/GMAC LINUX
mike-casa@mikecasa-HP-ENVY-14-Notebook-PC:~$ umount /media/mike-casa/GMAC LINUX
umount: /media/mike-casa/GMAC: No such file or directory
I cannot do step 2 because my usb label consists of two separate words so when I try to do
umount /media/mike-casa/GMAC LINUX
I get
umount: /media/mike-casa/GMAC: No such file or directory
GMAC LINUX is the label of my usb
Welcome Stuart!
Regards
Sharad
Rock On buddy!
share the knowledge with others too.
Regards
Sharad
Hello Sharad Chhetri
This has helped me immensely.
Thank you for this great article/tip.
Just perfect, thanks.
Thank you very much. It works for me.
Thank you from me too! Your solution worked easily. Best regards!
Thank you very much!
The only solution that worked for me.
Thank you for giving the feedback. Another addition in list of happy people.
Regards
Sharad
Thanks from me too Sharad, I rebooted and can use the usb drive again 🙂
Thank you!
worked perfectly! 😛
Hi Alien,
Thank you, your idea is good but I hardly invest time on development. If time allows, will try some hand on GTK+Python.
Regards
Sharad
Thanks for this! been looking for a solution to this for ages and this one actually worked! Would be nice to see it as a function or built into an app though.
thanks a lot!!!
Worked perfect, just make sure to reboot afterwards.
Thanks!
It did. Thank you
OK, after testing a bit more, apparently if you reboot your PC after doing the solution above (or any of the other ones on the web), you might solve the issue, at least it did for me.
Hope it works for you guys!
I followed all the steps but it is not worked for me,still I am not able to delete any file and format the drive.
Any other suggestion…?
Last command response:-
ritesh@ritesh-All-Series:~$ sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
open: Read-only file system
Didn’t work for me, follow the steps, no errors or anything, but the USB is still read-only :s
It requires here sudo permission.Like this –
sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
Regards
Sharad
sorry boss it is saying permission denied.
” cnis@ubuntu:~$ dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
open: Permission denied “
Welcome Vern,
Keep sharing the knowledge.
Regards
Sharad
Thanks very much 😉
brilliant mate , thanks very very much , it worked 1st time after a lot of searching . great . much appreciated your doing this .
vern FROM MELBOURNE .
Good to know that I’m not the only one who still use this when I encounter such problems. Works like a charm.
Crappy regression on Ubuntu/Mint. Now is year 2016 and I cannot write to USB!!! and have to apply several steps from command line instead of get it fixed with first critical system update asap.
Very very useful information.
Thank you
Hi Albert,
Unfortunately it seems the disk is corrupted and could be sectors are also affected.
Use the ‘testdisk’ [please,google it] , if there is any ray of hope then most probably you have to rebuilt the file system by using ‘TestDisk’
You have to “Do it yourself” because I am forgotten and these kind of issue rarely come [once in a blue moon] .
All the best!
Regards
Sharad
Thanks Sharad. My filesystem reads as hfsplus and the last statement seems like not working. I am getting the output as this.
fsck.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
Logical sector size is zero.
Any suggestions?
very very useful information. Thank you.
Hi,
I have same problem which Henmant has.
I followed your steps but it didn’t change anything.
Then I tried GUI mode. After formatting when I plug in my pen drive again I received a message:
Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/grarysz/Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon 64-bit: Command-line `mount -t “iso9660” -o “uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500” “/dev/sdb1” “/media/grarysz/Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon 64-bit”‘ exited with non-zero exit status 32: mount: block device /dev/sdb1 is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try
dmesg | tail or so
This is my third pen drive I’ve lost in the same way…
nice! thanks for feedback.
Regards
Sharad
Superb! I wrestled with a new USB for hours yesterday, and this fixed it in seconds. Thanks for the clear explanation of the process.
Welcome Fabio!
Regards
Sharad
Thank you
Hello Henmant,
Try formatting USB pen drive in GUI mode. https://sharadchhetri.com/2015/05/11/gui-format-usb-drive-on-ubuntu/
Regards
Sharad
Hello sir
please solve my problem i tried these steps but ihe didnt work
sudo su –
df -Th
umount /media/govind/5A85-E61F
/dev/sdb1 vfat 7.5G 3.2G 4.3G 43% /media/govind/5A85-E61F
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
open: Read-only file system
Dear Admin,
Thanks to reply ,
I can access my pendrive can play the videos that present in my pendrive and can open and see the docs. is it possible that after all this there may be any hardware issue bcoz i just try all possible solution in all solution my system is telling same thing that I have only read access. is there any solution to save my disk or its just a toy now?
Hello Sachin,
Thank you for trying the method. If USB drive has hardware issue then there is no command to fix it.
You can try formatting the USB pen drive through GUI. Read our this post if this one work for you. https://sharadchhetri.com/2015/05/11/gui-format-usb-drive-on-ubuntu/
Regards
Sharad
i just run both commands
1.mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1
mkfs.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
mkfs.vfat: unable to open /dev/sdc1: Read-only file system
2.mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/sdc1
mkfs.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
mkdosfs: unable to open /dev/sdc1: Read-only file system
Have you any other solution for this ?
Thanks
Sachin SIngh
Hello Alex,
May be you are not login as super user. Run the command
sudo su -
and then follow the steps.Regards
Sharad
Thanks, I follow your steps but i got this message:
fsck.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
open: Permesso negato
What can i do?
Hello Janne,
If your USB pend drive is Read Only and has really some malfunction with hardware then it is lucky to get the solution.
Try Gparted (http://gparted.org/) . Also check if your USB pen drive has any small button which is used for making Read Only. Some USB model has this option.
Regards
Sharad
I have a similar problem to this. I have a read-only usb pen drive and also one of my folders gives me this error warning when I try to open it: This location could not be displayed. Sorry, could not display contents of “june”: Error when getting information for file ../LEXAR/june/…:Input/output error
I’ve searched online but other topics on this were inconclusive.
Can you please help me out?
Thank you
Thanks bro!
I wish fixing USB pen drive could be life saver 🙂 Many issues could be solved.
Thanks again for commenting and giving feedback. Keep sharing the knowledge.
Regards
Sharad
thank u my friend ! u’r a life saver 🙂
Thank you Jeffrey,
Approving your comment which can be considered as suggestion also.
Regards
Sharad
Thanks! Worked perfect for me. You might also want to add that the .REC file can be renamed with the appropriate extension and at least in my case with a .tar.gz file I could recover it.
Great stuff! It worked. Thanks.
Use
sudo dosfsck -a
. Your login user must have sudo privileges .Or login with root usersu -l root
Regards
Sharad
When I give dosfsck -a command it shows permission denied …what I have to do now
it is taking so much time in my 1000gb external adata hard drive. what should i do in this case stop the process or wait for 1 week .
Hello Oddrocks,
If USB hardware is still healthy then there is a possibility. I hope you followed the steps after proper reading.
Regards
Sharad
Did not work for me
Hello Arun,
Check two things
1. USB should be properly mounted.
2. I can see you are typing ‘USB Stick’ not like this ‘USB Stick’ as suggested in my comment.
Can you send me the screenshot instead of pasting the output.
Regards
Sharad
same error as before-
arun-GA-78LMT-USB3 ~ # umount /media/arun/USB Stick
umount: /media/arun/USB: not found
umount: Stick: not found
Hello Arun,
Try this,
Regards
Sharad
Hi Sharad – not successful – i get the following in mint 17
arun@arun-GA-78LMT-USB3 ~ $ sudo su –
arun-GA-78LMT-USB3 ~ # df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev devtmpfs 3.9G 4.0K 3.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 797M 1.5M 796M 1% /run
/dev/sda5 ext4 453G 27G 404G 7% /
none tmpfs 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
none tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none tmpfs 3.9G 672K 3.9G 1% /run/shm
none tmpfs 100M 20K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sdc1 vfat 3.3G 1.5G 1.9G 45% /media/arun/USB Stick
arun-GA-78LMT-USB3 ~ # umount /media/arun/USB Stick
umount: /media/arun/USB: not found
umount: Stick: not found
Welcome Sawan,
Happy to add one more positive feedback. The troubleshooting is really helping.
Regards
Sharad
Really very use full thanks
Welcome Indrajeet,
Regards
Sharad
Absolutely great !!!!! thank you 🙂
Thanx , you save my time .
I’m clearly not too bright, 147 IQ points and nothing to show for it. I repeatedly cause myself this problem, panic, and forget what to do.. I actually bookmarked this article a while back because it has saved the day every time! I usually subject my thumb drives to it, but today I tried it with my MP3 player and now I don’t have to buy a new one I can’t afford! 😀 Thanks!
Much appreciated…thanks!
This method worked for me. Five stars!
Hi Fen,
Appreciate for giving feedback and sharing experience.
Regards
Sharad
Worked perfect for me. Thanks so much 🙂
Hello, I tried both, using dosfsck and even testdisk, but it keeps saying read-only… stupid pendrive. 🙂
Hi Aslanex,
It is OK to remove *.REC file. No problem will appear. I did same 🙂
Regards
Sharad
And is it ok to remove the *.REC files after that, or would this cause the problem again to appear?
Hi Eskender,
That is nice. You got the solution and shared here, this is more helpful. Other readers will also try this.
Regards
Sharad
Never mind. I used Testdisk to recover my files, and then format the disk.
$ dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 3.0.27 (2014-11-12)
open: Read-only file system
Never mind. I get to backup my data with testdisk. And now formatting it, until a same problem happen the next time.
I followed your steps to fix the pen drive error before. But this time, I am not getting any workarounds to solve this.
When I run “dosfsck -a /dev/sd..”, it got stuck with this message.
============
fsck.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
0x41: Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt.
Automatically removing dirty bit.
FATs differ but appear to be intact. Using first FAT.
/
Contains a free cluster (298861). Assuming EOF.
============
Under properties, the file system type is listed as “msdos”.
I only have 200 MB space left from my 4GB flash, but nothing apart from the freaking virus is displayed. (I tried the basic Ctrl+H ..)
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
is not working for me still getting destination is read only
Bookmark this page in my browser so that I could always come here & follow these steps when I face Read only USB problem – check
Dude, I’ve spent an hour trying to fix this (linux newb here) and this worked! I could kiss you man haha
Welcome Harsh,
Another very useful feedback.
Best Regards
Sharad
Thanks…..it worked for me.
Most Welcome Muncy,
Thank you for comment.
Regards
Sharad
Perfect. Thank you
Thanks Neeraj ,
I am glad to see the feedback. It helps to our other friends who come across through search engine.
Regards
Sharad
Thank you very much.
It really helped.
Thanks Rajiv,
Appreciate for feedback on this workaround.
Keep reading our blog.
Warms Regards
Sharad
Works like a Charm. Thank you.
Thank you for this article. I was able to save my files. It’s important to substitute your personal files instead of using the authors. For example, my USB pen drive was mounted in “/media/user/08E7-563B,” the partition was “/dev/sdb1” and the filesystem was “vfat.”
The commands I had to use were:
sudo su –
df -Th
umount /media/user/08E7-563B
dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
Then all I had to was wait for it to finish, unplug my USB drive when it was done, and plug it back in. Works perfectly now, and it even has the file that failed to copy over and locked my drive up. This couldn’t have been more simple.
Welcome Akash,
The feedback is very helpful for many readers.
Regards
Sharad
Thanks, it works …
I have a 32G USB memory stick with a FAT32 file system that mounts read only
blkid is /dev/sdc1: UUID=”551C-2AA9″ TYPE=”vfat” PARTUUID=”2b71fb4e-01
It mounts on /run/media/saejin/551C-2AA9
I tried installing it in a windows machine and ejecting it. It did not fix the problem.
# umount /dev/sdc1
#mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/sdc1
mkfs.fat 3.0.27 (2014-11-12)
mkdosfs: unable to open /dev/sdc1: Read-only file system
# umount /dev/sdc1
#dosfsck -a /dev/sdc1
mkfs.fat 3.0.27 (2014-11-12)
open Read-only file system
Welcome Ricardo,
Regards
Sharad
It worked… ubuntu 12.04 and the filesystem is vfat. dosfsck found the problematic file.
Thank you Sharad for your help!
Thankyou Nava,
Glad to know it worked for you
Regards
Sharad
Thank you Sharad for the details and steps.
Welcome Bikash
Wow! This is wonderful. Works!!! Thank you very much for this.
I don’t this it’s working for me 🙁
root@abhi-dell:~# umount “/media/abhijith/NEW VOLUME”
root@abhi-dell:~# dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
open: Read-only file system
root@abhi-dell:~#
sure, we are already communicating in email.
Will contact you back.
Regards
Sharad
I have tried that too but no result and i have explained how it happened through mail.
Could you help me with that
email has been sent to you, I hope you followed it.
Regards
Sharad
Same output came on “mounted on”
root@Heaven:~# df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 ext4 221G 51G 159G 25% /
none tmpfs 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev devtmpfs 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 385M 1.2M 384M 1% /run
none tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none tmpfs 1.9G 160K 1.9G 1% /run/shm
none tmpfs 100M 64K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sdb1 vfat 7.5G 638M 6.9G 9% /media/ubuntu/Ubuntu 14.10 amd64
root@Heaven:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 221G 51G 159G 25% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 385M 1.3M 384M 1% /run
none 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none 1.9G 160K 1.9G 1% /run/shm
none 100M 64K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sdb1 7.5G 638M 6.9G 9% /media/ubuntu/Ubuntu 14.10 amd64
What shall I do?
Hello Friend,
df -h
command will help to find mounted partition on system .Just run the command and check if /media/ubuntu/Ubuntu 14.10 amd64 is mounted.
The message itself shows /media/ubuntu/Ubuntu 14.10 amd64 is not mounted on system.
Regards
Sharad
After running “umount /media/ubuntu/Ubuntu 14.10 amd64”
I got this output:
umount: /media/ubuntu/Ubuntu: mountpoint not found
umount: 14.10: mountpoint not found
umount: amd64: mountpoint not found
What this means and what should I do to rectify?
Thank you!
Same problem…. any solution?
For making vfat system , you can use the command
(Recommended reading : http://linux.die.net/man/8/mkfs.vfat)
or
Regards
Sharad
how do we change the filesystem?
Hello Alessandro,
After attaching pen drive, run
fdisk -l
you may get the disk infoRegards
Sharad
I did all process but now my pendrive isn’t reconized by any Operational System.
Hello Sushil,
The solution works when there are some chances of possibility. If USB is completely malfunctioned on hardware level then it wont work in this way.
Here, in this post logic is to first convert the USB filesystem into vfat. Then run the command dosfsck . Try once again and send the out put of
df -Th
if issue still persist.Regards
Sharad
I’m also having the same problem. I’m not able to fix read only usb problem despite going through the procedure mentioned above.
Filesystem type for USB is showing fuseblk . Change it to
vfat
filesystem and try again.Regards
Sharad
root@sujit:~# df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 ext4 68G 3.8G 60G 6% /
none tmpfs 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev devtmpfs 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 387M 1.1M 386M 1% /run
none tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none tmpfs 1.9G 80K 1.9G 1% /run/shm
none tmpfs 100M 44K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sda3 fuseblk 146G 115G 31G 80% /media/sujit/study
root@sujit:~# umount /media/sujit/study
root@sujit:~# dosfsck -a /dev/sda3
dosfsck 3.0.16, 01 Mar 2013, FAT32, LFN
Currently, only 1 or 2 FATs are supported, not 0.
dosfsck command is not working for me, I got:
dosfsck 3.0.12, 29 Oct 2011, FAT32, LFN
FATs differ but appear to be intact. Using first FAT.
/.Trash-1001/expunged/3019349019/chap 2- preliminary/Lab_works/Jan-03-2012/bram_b/ipcore_dir
Contains a free cluster (1578960). Assuming EOF.
/…/case3.png
File size is 3927 bytes, cluster chain length is 0 bytes.
Truncating file to 0 bytes.
Unable to create unique name
Thankyou Kunal,
Glad to know it works for you.
Regards
Sharad
it worked, thanks
not solved for me either. Fresh format of usb stick under ubuntu 12.04 with gparted. Did all the steps.
root@xxxxxx# umount /media/greyone
root@xxxxxx# dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
dosfsck 3.0.12, 29 Oct 2011, FAT32, LFN
/dev/sdb1: 1 files, 1/950884 clusters
root@xxxxxx#
plugged back in and same problem.
maybe the problem lies here?
USB-Device is, or become suddenly read only without errors
If you see “Write Protect is off” and no errors in your logfiles, than you should set filesystem type specific mount options (FS_MOUNTOPTIONS) in /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf. Wrong gid causes mounting read only.
Even I’m getting the same proble as Minu.
Thank you!
Hello Minu,
Are you still facing the issue ?
Regards
Sharad
I just get the output
open: Read-only file system
Hello Sayky,
Môžete tiež napísať Vašu otázku vo vašom jazyku danej krajiny.
You can also write your question in your country language.
Thanks and Regards
Sharad
Hello Sayky,
Can you try once again and take screenshot of each steps.OR make a video of it. (In rare troubleshooting cases I asked for video)
You can send the file at admin@sharadchhetri.com
Regards
Sharad
Hi i m tryed it but it still no work 🙁 tryed 3x and nothing if u can help me PM me to mail
” open: Súborový systém dovoľuje len čítanie ” ( Open : File Systems are for READ-ONLY )
Welcome Sam,
Glad to know ,issue is solved by this method
yes , thumps up … it’s working
thank u.
You are Welcome Paulo
Thank you very much!!!