hi there
i'm having problems with a usb device that was read-write but somehow has become read only. If I try to remove a file in the USB I get:
Code:
rm: cannot remove 'x.c': Read-only file system
It doesn't have any external switch or anything like that and hasn't gone back to being writable at any time.

I think that somehow it internally changed to read only. Is there any way to change it back? Or is it internal and nothing can be done?

Here is the relevant output from dmesg:
Code:
[ 2902.781714] usb-storage: device found at 3
[ 2902.781722] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 2907.780229] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 2907.781086] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     FLASH    Drive AU_USB20   8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ 2907.810847] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] 4016128 512-byte hardware sectors (2056 MB)
[ 2907.811701] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is on
[ 2907.811708] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00
[ 2907.811711] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 2907.815530] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] 4016128 512-byte hardware sectors (2056 MB)
[ 2907.816289] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is on
[ 2907.816295] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00
[ 2907.816298] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 2907.816662]  sdc:
[ 2907.992254] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 2907.992523] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
And this is its line in /etc/mtab:
Code:
/dev/sdc /media/disk vfat ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush 0 0
I also tried writing similar things in fstab too to mount automatically with rw but this didn't work.

I tried remounting it a few times
Code:
$ mount -o remount,rw /media/disk
$ mount -w -t vfat -o remount,rw /dev/sdc /media/disk
which gave this:
Code:
mount: block device /dev/sdc is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: block device /dev/sdc is write-protected but explicit '-w' flag given
but still no change at all.
Is this a problem I can fix? This happens on linux/mac/windows and I can't reformat it in windows.

Does anyone think that they can help?