I'm pretty confident in Linux now, but this USB stick is complaining of a read only file system, but I wrote to it in Windows 7 a minute ago, and there was no issues. I've tried all the suggestions from other posts, and all the things I can think of.
Here is the dmesg stating write-protection is off:
[ 5563.009330] scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access SanDisk Cruzer Edge 1.26 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 5563.009676] sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
[ 5563.011878] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdi] 31266816 512-byte logical blocks: (16.0 GB/14.9 GiB)
[ 5563.013754] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdi] Write Protect is off
[ 5563.013759] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdi] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[ 5563.014970] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdi] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Here is the problem:
adam@Home:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdi ~/usb
mount: /dev/sdi is write-protected, mounting read-only
I have also formatted the usb with zero's with DD, and tried again:
adam@Home:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdi bs=1k count=2048
2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
2097152 bytes (2.1 MB, 2.0 MiB) copied, 0.426446 s, 4.9 MB/s
adam@Home:~$ sudo parted /dev/sdi
GNU Parted 3.2
Using /dev/sdi
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Error: /dev/sdi: unrecognised disk label
Model: SanDisk Cruzer Edge (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdi: 16.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:
(parted) mklabel msdos
(parted) mkpart primary
File system type? [ext2]? fat32
Start? 1MiB
End? 100%
(parted) p
Model: SanDisk Cruzer Edge (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdi: 16.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 16.0GB 16.0GB primary fat32 lba
(parted) q
Information: You may need to update /etc/fstab.
adam@Home:~$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 698.7G 0 disk
└─md0 9:0 0 2.7T 0 linear /mnt/raiddrives
sdb 8:16 0 698.7G 0 disk
└─md0 9:0 0 2.7T 0 linear /mnt/raiddrives
sdc 8:32 0 698.7G 0 disk
└─md0 9:0 0 2.7T 0 linear /mnt/raiddrives
sdd 8:48 0 698.7G 0 disk
└─md0 9:0 0 2.7T 0 linear /mnt/raiddrives
sde 8:64 1 7.6G 0 disk
├─sde1 8:65 1 487M 0 part /boot
├─sde2 8:66 1 1K 0 part
└─sde5 8:69 1 7.1G 0 part
├─Home--vg-root 252:0 0 3.2G 0 lvm /
└─Home--vg-swap_1 252:1 0 4G 0 lvm [SWAP]
sdi 8:128 1 14.9G 0 disk
└─sdi1 8:129 1 14.9G 0 part
adam@Home:~$ sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdi1
mkfs.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
adam@Home:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdi ~/usb
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdi,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so.
There is no button the USB to turn write protection on or off.
Best Answer
I wanted to extend john smiths answer. I had made two USB sticks bootable using Ubuntus "Start media creator". It made the sticks unusable afterwards, because they were write protected and I could not format them in Ubuntu or Windows. I tried fdisk, gparted. No dice.
What helped was inserting the stick (make sure this is the only USB drive inserted), finding out where it is mounted:
df -ThThat will show you a list of devices/partitions and their mount paths/points:
udev devtmpfs 7,8G 0 7,8G 0% /dev ... /dev/sdb1 vfat 7,5G 4,0K 7,5G 1% /media/<USER_NAME>/<STICK_NAME_OR_ID>Find your USB stick and remember its partition device path (here: /dev/sdb1) and mount point (here: /media/USER_NAME/STICK_NAME_OR_ID). Then unmount it:
sudo umount /media/USER_NAME/STICK_NAME_OR_IDNow recreate the file system (FAT32 in this case):
sudo mkfs.msdos -F 32 /dev/sdb1Wait a short time and unplug the stick. Wait again and plug it in. It should be writable now...