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Accepted
Sean
Asked: 2023-11-26 04:03:06 +0800 CST

External hard drive that always used to mount read-write when plugged in now mounts read-only

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I have an external hard drive that I use for backing up data. I bought and configured it several years ago, and since then it has always mounted read-write whenever I plug it in. Recently, though, it's started mounting as read-only. I haven't knowingly changed any relevant configuration.

Using my limited sysadmin skills, I can unmount the drive from a terminal and then run sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/myusername/Backup, its usual mount point, and it comes back mounted read-write.

Earlier today the read-only mounting happened again when I plugged in the drive, and I noticed that the drive had been mounted on the directory /media/myusername/Backup1, a directory that doesn't normally exist. When I unmounted the drive, that directory disappeared.

Any tips on how to diagnose the issue and/or restore the original mount-read-write behavior?

mount

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I tried waltinator's suggested approach of running journalctl --follow before plugging in my drive, which was for some reason offered as a comment and not as an answer I could accept. Within the output I saw the line

    warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended

    So, I ran e2fsck on the drive. It found some errors and fixed them, and now my drive mounts read-write when I plug it in. Hurrah!

    It would be interesting to work out why I can still mount the damaged filesystem read-write from the command line, but I'll stop here and count myself fortunate to have taken only a minor hit to my reputation for asking a question that is, apparently, ill-posed and poorly-formatted.

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