sharadchhetri

Tutorials On Linux, Unix & Open Source

How to fix read only USB pen drive in Ubuntu

by 207 Comments

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.)

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. JP says

    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

  2. Sahil khan says

    I have try that command but my usb is not repair?
    It show that open: Read-only file system

  5. iain mckeand says

    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.

  9. Will says

    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”

  10. João says

    root@Joao:~# dosfsck -a /dev/sdg1
    fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
    open: Read-only file system
    root@Joao:~#

  11. Ryan Brown says

    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.

  13. James says

    I’ve had USB “read only” problems twice. No one had a solution. I used this fix and it worked great.

  18. Corneliu Florea says

    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

  19. Corneliu Florea says

    Same problem. My Harrdisk remains read-only. At vfat partition veryifing, appears one bit to hide / eliminate..

  20. al_fonsius says

    this worked perfect with my USB 3.0 pen drive, manjaro 20.2.1 Gnome
    many thanks
    al_fonsius

  24. Ubuntu says

    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.

  25. Marcellus says

    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?

  29. Marcellus says

    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

  31. Marcellus says

    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

  36. ono says

    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?

  38. ThumbOne says

    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.

  39. Mike Rogers says

    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

  49. BHANU PRATAP MISHRA says

    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

  51. Chukwunonso Omile says

    Thanks a lot. USB drive started working after restarting my system. God bless you!

  54. Krish says

    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?

  56. sanjay suryavanshi says

    root@hrsky:~# dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
    fsck.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
    open: Read-only file system

  57. Linda says

    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.

  60. David says

    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 #

  63. Alexa Tilbrook says

    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!

  64. NLK says

    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 ??

  65. Yaohui says

    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?

  66. Robin Holler says

    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

  67. Jadeopia says

    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.

  68. Shashank says

    Thanks for the extremely helpful article.

    I had to repeat the process 3-4 times before it worked.

  69. Sharad Chhetri says

    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

  70. Donato Roque says

    my usb is formated as ntfs and not vfat. Would that be a reason why this solution isn’t working for me?

  72. Alexander Girma (From. Ethiopia) says

    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!

  75. Jack says

    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!

  76. Oscar Dominguez says

    I really appreciate your great help. A locked memory is not worth much.
    Thanks.
    Oscar Dominguez

  78. Megha says

    Hey Mosololi,
    Change your USB drive name without any space. Eg. “GMAC” instead of “GMAC LINUX” then it’ll work

  79. Mosololi says

    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

  80. Mosololi says

    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

  83. Tony Wells says

    Hello Sharad Chhetri

    This has helped me immensely.

    Thank you for this great article/tip.

  92. Alien Nomad says

    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.

  96. J says

    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!

  97. Ritesh says

    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

  100. Avinash Hanwate says

    sorry boss it is saying permission denied.

    ” cnis@ubuntu:~$ dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1
    fsck.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
    open: Permission denied “

  103. VERN KEEBLE . says

    brilliant mate , thanks very very much , it worked 1st time after a lot of searching . great . much appreciated your doing this .
    vern FROM MELBOURNE .

  104. Eskender says

    Good to know that I’m not the only one who still use this when I encounter such problems. Works like a charm.

  105. lenny says

    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.

  107. Sharad Chhetri says

    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

  108. Albert says

    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?

  110. Piotr Cieśla says

    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…

  112. chris says

    Superb! I wrestled with a new USB for hours yesterday, and this fixed it in seconds. Thanks for the clear explanation of the process.

  116. hanmant says

    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

  117. sachin singh says

    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?

  119. sachin singh says

    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

  121. ALex says

    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?

  122. sharad chhetri says

    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

  123. Janne says

    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

  124. sharad chhetri says

    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

  127. Jeffrey Blanchard says

    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.

  131. akshay kumar says

    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 .

  134. sharad chhetri says

    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

  135. Arun says

    same error as before-

    arun-GA-78LMT-USB3 ~ # umount /media/arun/USB Stick
    umount: /media/arun/USB: not found
    umount: Stick: not found

  137. Arun says

    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

  143. Vincent D. Camley says

    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!

  148. Gaston says

    Hello, I tried both, using dosfsck and even testdisk, but it keeps saying read-only… stupid pendrive. 🙂

  150. Aslanex says

    And is it ok to remove the *.REC files after that, or would this cause the problem again to appear?

  154. Eskender says

    Never mind. I get to backup my data with testdisk. And now formatting it, until a same problem happen the next time.

  155. Eskender says

    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.

  157. Eskender says

    Bookmark this page in my browser so that I could always come here & follow these steps when I face Read only USB problem – check

  158. J.F.R. says

    Dude, I’ve spent an hour trying to fix this (linux newb here) and this worked! I could kiss you man haha

  167. JCL says

    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.

  170. saejin says

    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

  172. ricardo says

    It worked… ubuntu 12.04 and the filesystem is vfat. dosfsck found the problematic file.
    Thank you Sharad for your help!

  177. AbhiSom says

    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:~#

  179. help me says

    I have tried that too but no result and i have explained how it happened through mail.

    Could you help me with that

  181. help me says

    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?

  182. sharad chhetri says

    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

  183. help me says

    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!

  188. Alessandro dos Santos says

    I did all process but now my pendrive isn’t reconized by any Operational System.

  189. sharad chhetri says

    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

  190. sushil says

    I’m also having the same problem. I’m not able to fix read only usb problem despite going through the procedure mentioned above.

  192. Sujit says

    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.

  193. Souri says

    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

  196. erik says

    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.

  201. sharad chhetri says

    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

  203. sayky says

    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 )

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