USB Drive went into Read-only mode and doesn't allow me to write or delete anything
 

Hi,

I am using Linux kernel 3.4.56 and I was working with a USB stick but while doing a system upgrade procedure, it went into read-only mode.

And now it doesn't allow me to write or delete anything.

I have already checked the permissions, tried SU mode, tried fdisk -l, but nothing helped.

Lots of our USB sticks went down because of this problem.

How can I fix this?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

You can try mounting it with 'rw' option. If your usb device is /dev/sdb,and you want to mount /dev/sdb1 at /mnt/usb then you can try:

If that doesn't work, you may need to unmount and use fsck. If the stick has got corrupted, then it's mounted as ro so that you can get at the data but not make things worse by writing to it.

Boot to a live cd and see if you can access it.

I'd wonder about the actual hardware too. This is unusual.
"Lots of our USB sticks went down because of this problem."

I don't want to sound flip and you may already have tried this, but have you tried unmounting, removing, and remounting the drive? I have had this happen to me occasionally (less than once every month or two) with a drive that is constantly connected and with my Iriver podplayer, which mounts as a mass storage device, and removing and reconnecting the device has always cleared it up.

Thanks,
> I tried mount -o rw /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb, it successfully executed with returning 0.
But the Usb is still mounted in read-only mode.

> Already tried fsck, but did not work.

> I mean by, "Lots of our USB sticks went down because of this problem" is around 10-15 usb sticks went down out of 5000.

But still its a serious issue and affecting our reputation.