USB set to write protect mode

Question

I used the dd command to burn a bootable Ubuntu distro (ISO file) to my USB. Now the entire drive is completely "read only". It's impossible to modify it! I tried switching to root and executed several different commands:

hdparm -r0
sudo chmod -R -v 777 *
chown -R -v
chmod ugo+wx /

Basically, all the tricks listed on StackExchange by people that experienced the same problem failed. Nothing seems to work!! I got so frustrated that I walked over and plugged it into a WinXP box to get it to r/w. It managed to copy a small file to a 2MB boot partition that appeared in Windows Explorer as FAT32.

Changing the partition type with fdisk, somehow split the USB into two partitions, the small 2MB FAT32 partition that I copied the WinXP file to and the large partition that holds the Ubuntu data. My head is stuck in the sand. Mounting it with the RW option didn't work either.

Answer 1

In the worst case, the flash drive has either a defect or has died.

I bought three identical Patriot 32GB Supersonic drives from an online retailer and one of them was "write protected" out of the box. I went to the manufacturer's website and, after downloading and trying their own tool just to be sure, they granted an RMA without any fuss about it. I had a new, working drive a week later.

Best of luck to you.

Answer 2

Try sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<device>. That will completely overwrite the drive with zeros. Then you can format it to FAT 32 or whatever using the Disks utility.

Answer 3

ok! It turns out that .iso file that I had copied to the USB via dd cmd, is actually stored in a special file-system/format: iso9660, that's read-only according to the "experts." The easiest solution is to make a small partition on the USB just for the iso marked "bootable" with cfdisk, and then a separate partition(s) for the remaining portion of the USB with gparted or cfdisk.