Arch Linux

midori

Member

Registered: 2026-01-20

Posts: 4

Ventoy - Mounting USB

I have already installed ventoy on a USB, but I cannot mount and when I managed to do so, it mounted as read-only. Also, it does not contain a physical switch for turning write protection on and off.

Here is the USB that I want to mount.

sda           8:0    1  29.3G  0 disk
├─sda1        8:1    1  29.3G  0 part
└─sda2        8:2    1    32M  0 part

When I type sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb it outputs mount: /mnt/usb: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

The online guides I found for ventoy always use the GUI option, which does not work for me (even if it did, it would require the USB to be mounted), plus I want to do it via terminal and actually understand what is going on.

Any help and explanation would be appreciated.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,064

Re: Ventoy - Mounting USB

Take the error message at face value and look at/post your dmesg - what filesystem did you pick for the data partition?

This is often the case if you updated the kernel on your current boot and haven't rebooted yet, which will make not yet loaded FS modules unable to load.

Last edited by V1del (2026-01-20 19:44:47)

midori

Member

Registered: 2026-01-20

Posts: 4

Re: Ventoy - Mounting USB

I don't really understand the output of sudo dmesg but it seems like the kernel recognizes my USB, but can't find ext4 filesystem. Below is what seemed to be the important part of the output.

EXT4-fs (sda1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
[   64.325312] EXT4-fs (sda1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
[   64.326191] EXT4-fs (sda1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
[   64.328558] FAT-fs (sda1): bogus number of reserved sectors
[   64.328562] FAT-fs (sda1): Can't find a valid FAT filesystem

Why is it looking for ext4 first and then FAT32? And why can't it find what it's looking for, even though the installation occurred without problems?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,064

Re: Ventoy - Mounting USB

uname -a
pacman -Qs kernel

Though this generally reads like the disk/usb might be corrupted, did you properly unmount/sync after writing ventoy to it? How old is the stick you used to do this? What happens if you retry from scratch?

midori

Member

Registered: 2026-01-20

Posts: 4

Re: Ventoy - Mounting USB

The usb is new. And no, I didn't umount it properly when I managed to mount it as read only. Then the other times I removed it, since I was unable to mount it, I didn't umount it.

uname -a

Linux navi 6.18.5-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun, 11 Jan 2026 17:10:53 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

pacman -Qs kernel

local/iptables 1:1.8.11-2
    Linux kernel packet control tool (using legacy interface)
local/kmod 34.2-1
    Linux kernel module management tools and library
local/libdrm 2.4.131-1
    Userspace interface to kernel DRM services
local/libnetfilter_conntrack 1.0.9-2
    Library providing an API to the in-kernel connection tracking state table
local/libnfnetlink 1.0.2-2
    Low-level library for netfilter related kernel/userspace communication
local/libsysprof-capture 49.0-1
    Kernel based performance profiler - capture library
local/linux 6.18.5.arch1-1
    The Linux kernel and modules
local/linux-api-headers 6.18-1
    Kernel headers sanitized for use in userspace
local/mtdev 1.1.7-1
    A stand-alone library which transforms all variants of kernel MT events to the slotted type B protocol

And for some reason I can't update my kernel to 6.18.6

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,982

Re: Ventoy - Mounting USB

ventoy usually uses exFAT for the big data partition - maybe require exfat-utils or exfatprogs

midori

Member

Registered: 2026-01-20

Posts: 4

Re: Ventoy - Mounting USB

My kernel is now the latest stable version and I have downloaded the exfat-utils. But that shouldn't really matter. My problem is that I cannot mount the USB, I have already mounted my SSD before during the installation process, so I don't understand how am I having this problem. Ventoy is already installed, but does not contain any ISOs since I haven't been able to mount it and copy any over to it. I tried to mount another USB that I own, but the same problem persists, I cannot access any of them.