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I have a usb stick that suddenly started mounting read-only. I was going try and reformat it (e.g. with gparted) but wouldn't let me as it's mounted read only. Also (optimistically) tried zero-ing it (i.e. dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdb - again same problem).

Tried some of the regular fixes to mounting usb problems ... e.g:

sudo mount -o remount,rw /media/mountpoint
mount: cannot remount /dev/sdb1 read-write, is write-protected

Tried sudo dosfsck -a /dev/sdb1 - (it was a fat32 formatted USB stick), with similar effect. Also ran badblocks, which found 25 bad blocks.

Any clues on what's going on? And what else I can try?

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    This problem (and/or related problems) is described at the following link, askubuntu.com/questions/144852/…
    – sudodus
    Jul 17, 2017 at 12:02
  • Damn (and thanks) .... sounds like it's 'gridlocked'. On the plus side, I learned a new term. Will poke around and hope for the best.
    – djmac
    Jul 17, 2017 at 14:00
  • Please try according to the list in the link in my previous comment, ' The drive is read-only:'. Chances are that it is gridlocked, but maybe something is disturbing the function, and you might be able to work around it. Good luck :-)
    – sudodus
    Jul 17, 2017 at 19:47

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With the price of USB flash drives what it is, compared with the value of whatever you're likely to store on it, the best thing I can suggest for a flash drive with bad blocks is to toss it in the trash (erase with a hammer first, if you're concerned about data that might be recoverable from the drive) and buy a new one.

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  • ...It is a 256 GB though - would prefer not to (I think it was circa $200). But yeah, otherwise I wouldn't bother.
    – djmac
    Jul 17, 2017 at 12:18
  • I have only one thing to say about $200 USB sticks: O.o
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Jul 17, 2017 at 12:33

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