On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 15:40:01 +0100, Hendrik Boom wrote: > I have a problem with my USB sticks mysteriously becoming read-only. > > I decided to investigate. I bought three identical 8G USB sticks, > identical except for colour). None of them appear have any switches on > them. > > The first I used my Linux laptop to write a file into the top-level > directory of the first stick: I mounted it, wrote it, and unmounted it. > I handed it to my wife, who was to read it on her Mac. She told me it > failed to even notice there was a USB stick plugged in. But returned to > me, I could mount it and read it. > > I put the second into my Linux laptop, mounted it, listed the top-level > directory (it was empty), unmounted it. I passed it to my wife, who > plugged it into her Mac, and it immediately noticed the USB stick and > allowed her to look at its contents. It was, of course, empty. > > I'm running Debian testing on an ASUS netbook. > > Speculation: > > Now this doesn't tell me anything about how my USB sticks turn read- > only. But it does tell me that something weird is happening to them. > Perhaps the two OS's have different ieas as to how USB sticks are to be > written or read? Perhaps one of the other machined in the house it > writing the in such a was that Linux can't read them? > > What do I need to know to investigate this. > > Has anyone else had problems like this? > > Online all I found was some people on Windows with read-only USB sticks. > One of them said that some friend using Linux had "fixed" them. No one > else had any luck. I have no idea if their experience has any relevance. > > -- hendrik
You said you wrote to the "top level directory". I'm guessing you were running as root and wrote to a section that you shouldn't have tampered with. For example, a drive might appears both as /dev/sdd and /dev/sdd1. You don't want to mess with /dev/sdd - loosely speaking, that's just for the partition table (i.e. use fdisk or one of its kin to alter if necessary). Read/write/mount only the /dev/sdd1. Of course the drive could have failed, but it seems unlikely. Have you tried to fsck the drive? HTH-- -F -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/leg008$p6k$1...@dont-email.me
