I have three mounted vfat partitions. One has recently become read-only without my approval and despite my efforts to make it writable. Its permissions allow for full read/write/execute by all users and groups. Despite this all files and folders on this partition are write-protected. Whenever I try to make a change to this partition, I receive the following alert:

Quote:

Couldn't [perform intended action on file or folder] because it is on a read-only disk

I am able to write to the other two partitions, which are on the same physical drive as the bad partition.
Does anyone have any insight into why this problem exists?

Note: These are generic comments, not specific to your distribution.

This is usually a symptom of a hard disk failure. Check you log files, usually in /var/log or try dmesg | tail.

If the partition is read-only, you should be able to run e2fsck on it (as root) to see if it can be fixed.

CAUTION: Do not run e2fsck on a logical volume partition. Run it on dev/mapper/<name> instead. e2fsck does not understand type 8E partitions.