Arch Linux

Gabriel-Science

Member

From: Comet Observatory

Registered: 2026-02-25

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] USB mounted as read-only, both automatically and manually

Hello !
I had this issue recently where I can’t change anything inside my USB storage devices, because it’s considered read-only. I first thought it was because of the Thunar file explorer or something, but I realised I can’t change any file in the USB drive even when mounting it manually with this :

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/usbdrive
$ sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbdrive

(I used sdc1 as an example here.)

I remember I could initially have it working as intended (when mounting manually at least), but since then, a lot of things changed in my installation (for example, using SDDM instead of manually running Sway).

Have a great day !

Last edited by Gabriel-Science (2026-02-26 21:38:55)

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dimich

Member

From: Kharkiv, Ukraine

Registered: 2009-11-03

Posts: 493

Re: [SOLVED] USB mounted as read-only, both automatically and manually

sudo mkdir /mnt/usbdrive
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbdrive

Show output of

$ ls -ld /mnt/usbdrive

and

$ mount | grep /mnt/usbdrive

Since you mounted it as root, likely owner of mountpoint is root and permissions are rwxr-xr-x (or whatever without write access for others).
If filesystem is FAT, try to mount with

$ sudo mount -o uid=<UID> /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbdrive 

(Change <UID> to your user name).

I remember I could initially have it working as intended (when mounting manually at least)

Maybe there was /mnt/usbdrive entry in /etc/fstab with proper uid= option, and now there isn't.

Last edited by dimich (2026-02-26 17:57:28)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,364

Re: [SOLVED] USB mounted as read-only, both automatically and manually

Sanity check, the device can still be written on other hosts or this affects all external drives?

When NAND dies the controller will disabling writing to protect the integrity of the existing data - you'll likely find hints of that in dmesg/the system journal.

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Gabriel-Science

Member

From: Comet Observatory

Registered: 2026-02-25

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] USB mounted as read-only, both automatically and manually

Show output of

$ ls -ld /mnt/usbdrive

and

$ mount | grep /mnt/usbdrive

Sure !

$ ls -ld /mnt/usbdrive
drwxr-xr-x - root  1 jan  1970  /mnt/usbdrive
$ mount | grep /mnt/usbdrive
/dev/sdc1 on /mnt/usbdrive type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro)

It's a blank drive by the way.

But actually, it doesn't matter because… it works now ?!
It's really weird, I don't know if I had a deamon still running in the background or something, but I know I uninstalled and reinstalled GVFS, which maybe changed something… Also I try to use a bit more

pacman -Rsnu package-name

when it's appropriate instead of

pacman -R package-name

so maybe it did something.

Sanity check, the device can still be written on other hosts or this affects all external drives?

Haha, yes ! I know it's working, but it was a good idea to ask nonetheless.

Thank you for your help, everyone, even though I think I managed to make it work :P !

Last edited by Gabriel-Science (2026-02-26 21:40:21)

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An IFSCL fan