Whole USB-Stick set to read only both in Linux and Windows

English Hardware
1

Hello, I am a newbie to Linux, but try my best to find out things myself.

Well in the course of crashing my OpenSuse 11.2 first time (but this is another story :’(), my 8GB USB-stick somehow got set to read only. I would understand if this happens in Linux due to the much more sophisticated system of permissions, but in Windows XP?

I can read and copy files from the USB-stick in both OS, but I can´t write anymore to it. Trying to delete/change the read-only attribute in Windows was in vain. Same goes for Linux.

Any help is very much apreciated!

2

Well, you are going to have to tell us more. What is the total disk space on the USB stick? How much space is said to be free? How much space is being used? Are the files on the stick set as read only? What type of file system does the stick use? (FAT or FAT32 or NTFS for instance). Have you tried to use chkdsk from Windows on the USB stick?

Thank You,

3

Some USB sticks have a switch on it for write-protect… Check if your USB stick has one such…

4

Thank you for trying to help me, jdmcdaniel3, but all my gratitude goes to ash25!!!

Yes, there is a switch!

I changed the position … and everthing works fine again.

Thank you once again ash25 because neither would I have ever thought of this possibility nor spotted this tiny switch without your hint.

5

Glad to be of help…

I didn’t know about one such either till one of my friends in college told me about it one tile while using her USB pen drive… I was getting similar ‘Unable to copy error’ in Windows Xp :smiley: