MacOS – All USB sticks mount as readonly, FAT32 or VFAT. Rebooting mounts them read-write

macosmountsleep-wakeusb

I'm using Mac OS 10.12.6 Sierra.
Recently I've found that whenever I (rarely) reach for a usb stick to transfer images or files, they mount readonly for me. I can't seem to figure out how to mount them read-write, or what causes this.

Also the main solution I found has been to reboot the macbook pro 15 and then it'll use usb sticks normally as read-write.

It seems something to do with waking from deep sleep… but I'd like to find a way to kick it into "normal operation" without rebooting. OR to prevent it from abnormal behavior to begin with.

Best Answer

I read an apple forum about this, A user in the forum said that if you format the pen drive to FAT32 in Disk utility you might solve your problem. Make sure you have a backup of all the contents in the pendrive because erasing it will remove all files.

Related Solutions

macOS Disk Utility – How to Remount Read-Only Volume as Read-Write

I have to do the following from the command line to get a USB drive to mount read/write:

diskutil list
sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk2s1 <- (put your volume/partition in here)
cd /Volumes
sudo mkdir <FOLDER_NAME>
sudo mount -w -t msdos /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/<FOLDER_NAME>

This is with a FAT32 formatted USB stick. Not sure why, but my Mac will only mount these read only when they automount, only started happening recently. Reformatting does not resolve it, even formatting in a macOS native filesystem gives me the same issue. This is happening on multiple USB sticks after many reformats and reboots.

The problem is that I have to do that each time I remove the drive and want to plug it back in.

How to auto mount encrypted USB sticks after hibernate

You can use a program called ControlPlane to automatically eject your USB drives when the system going to sleep.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

macOS Disk Utility – How to Remount Read-Only Volume as Read-Write

How to auto mount encrypted USB sticks after hibernate

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