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Accepted
Sumeet Deshmukh
Asked: 2017-04-11 08:20:24 +0800 CST

I formatted a USB drive and now it says the destination is read only [duplicate]

  • 772

The Problem

It was a bootable Ubuntu USB drive at first I tried to format it using Nautilus it didn't work, then i simply deleted the partition using Gparted and created a new FAT32 partition. but when I tried to copy anything to the USB drive it gave me this error. I'm the owner of the location, technically I should be able to write to it.

Screenshot

What I've tried so far

  1. Tried formatting the partition to NTFS, it gave me the same error

  2. Tried formatting the partition to EXT4, root took the ownership of the location, I got the ownership back by running

    chown -R user:user PATH

    it did work, I became the owner but the error was still there.

  3. Tried formatting using Disk app, formatting was successful but I still can't write.

  4. Since it's a USB OTG drive, I tried connecting it to my Phone (Nexus 5) and strangely I can write to it from my phone (using ES file Explorer), written files are visible in Nautilus but i still can't write new data to it using Nautilus

  5. I don't have windows installed so I can't format it from there.

output of lsblk

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sdb      8:16   0   1.8T  0 disk 
├─sdb4   8:20   0   713G  0 part /mnt/Series
├─sdb2   8:18   0   220G  0 part /mnt/Movies
├─sdb3   8:19   0   710G  0 part /mnt/Hollywood
└─sdb1   8:17   0   220G  0 part /mnt/Stuff
sdc      8:32   1  15.1G  0 disk 
└─sdc1   8:33   1  15.1G  0 part /media/sumeet/bb499853-a4a5-40dd-
a5cc-c94d4ec0a
sda      8:0    0 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sda5   8:5    0  14.3G  0 part /
├─sda1   8:1    0   7.6G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda6   8:6    0  89.9G  0 part /home

Disk is question here is dev/sdc1 which is Strontium Nitro USB drive

output of mount is posted here at Paste Ubuntu

output of ls -l /media/sumeet/rupam

total 5568
-rw-r--r-- 1 sumeet sumeet 1833612 Apr 11  2017 IMG_20170325_191153.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 sumeet sumeet 2537997 Apr 11  2017 IMG_20170329_200512.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 sumeet sumeet 1319450 Apr 11  2017 IMG_20170407_085110.jpg

UPDATE (I've written this section in little bit of rush, if it needs further explanation, please ask)

I tried running this command as suggested in the answer

sudo dd if="/dev/zero" of="/dev/sdc1"
sudo reboot

which took forever, and after reboot my USB drive wasn't mounted I tried to mount it at /mnt/sdc1 by running

sudo mount -o rw,users,umask=000 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1

which gave me this output
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc1,
   missing codepage or helper program, or other error

   In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
   dmesg | tail or so.

when I last formatted it I clearly remember it being ext4 partition on the USB drive, so i ran this command to fix that I've used this command before on same issue on my /dev/sdbn partitions

 sudo e2fsck -f -b 32768 -y /dev/sdc1

now it says

e2fsck 1.43.3 (04-Sep-2016)
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdc1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
or
e2fsck -b 32768 <device>

Is their a way that I can know that my partition (USB drive) was actually Ext4?

after all this sudo lsblk -f isn't showing any partition type on my drive

NAME   FSTYPE LABEL     UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sdb                                                          
├─sdb4 ext4   Series    707694b6-97b8-4374-9283-c98192591486 /mnt/Series
├─sdb2 ext4   Movies    b2d7f1a7-f3e6-4ca5-9925-d8225c897e4d /mnt/Movies
├─sdb3 ext4   Hollywood c2104e2a-cc8e-4b7b-9bba-a05d316472b4 /mnt/Hollywood
└─sdb1 ext4   Stuff     54c9765b-af6d-4a62-905f-09b56e280178 /mnt/Stuff
sdc                                                          
└─sdc1                                                       
sda                                                          
├─sda2                                                       
├─sda5 ext4             1cdd8ee7-c5c6-4bd6-af9b-9ed320f50c30 /
├─sda1 swap             d1749176-6c41-4961-a6bd-0c6a56968970 [SWAP]
└─sda6 ext4             161aa7c2-8e61-4848-8615-49cf66d80130 /home

UPDATE 2

mkusb finally solved my problem, USB drive is back and fully working

mkusb community wiki

usb

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I've had this same issue with recent versions of Ubuntu when creating Live USBs. If your issue is the same as mine, the fix I have implemented is a very simple one. The issue seems to be related to the file system dumped onto the USB when you create an Ubuntu Startup Disk. Wiping the very beginning of the USB device erases whatever causes this problem.

    Here's what you want to do.

    • Determine the path to your device, not the partition path. Mine is /dev/sdd. The device path will never end with a number! Numbers indicate partitions on the device. The device path should look something like /dev/sdX, where X is a letter a-z. Use the gnome-disks tool, select your device, and look at the window title.disks.png
    • Make sure none of the partitions on your USB device are mounted.

    • Armed with your device path run the following command, replacing /your/device with your device path (WARNING: this will destroy existing data on the device you provide the path for)

      sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/your/device bs=1M count=10

    • Finally, now try reformatting your USB, and it should be back to normal

    • 7