Can't write to USB pen drive

[Inuxlay]

Hello all,
I am a linux newbie, and I am having trouble with my USB pen drive. When I plug it into my computer, an icon appears on the desktop. I can open file on it. The trouble arises when i try to save changes or in any way write to the drive. Root is the owner now, but sometimes when I plug it in, I am the owner. Either way, when I go into permissions, I can see that owner has r-w-e permissions, which I would think would be sufficient to write to the drive. I also noticed that I can't change the permissions, whether in root or my account. Any Ideas? Thanks!

[leaded]

I'm having problems too. It worked fine on FC2... If I boot my computer with my Sandisk USB thumb drive in it works fine for reading and writing. Just now, I plugged it in, deleted a file just to test and it worked. (I also emptied to trash to further delete that sucker). About 15 seconds later I tried to delete another file and it says The destination disk is read only. How do I fix this?

[Brian1]

Edit /etc/fstab to something similiar to this

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick vfat umask=000,users,noauto,owner,rw,sync,dirsync 0 0

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

[Inuxlay]

I made the changes to the /etc/fstab file, but I'm getting the same error message: "You do not have permission to change this file"

[mjman]

Are these drives formatted with FAT32?? recently I had a problem where linux corrupted the filesystem on my external harddrive, and the drive became read-only. try reformatting the drive.

[Inuxlay]

this is a flash drive...shouldn't need any kind of formatting should it?

[Brian1]

What's in your /etc/fstab file now? Is kudzu service running?

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

[Inuxlay]

This is my fstab file:

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /mnt/data vfat defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-hdb3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrw_dvdrom auto noauto,user,exec,managed,fscontext=system_u:object _r:removable_t,ro 0 0
/dev/hda2 /media/idedisk ntfs noauto,user,exec,managed 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/usbdisk vfat umask=000,users,noauto,owner,rw,sync,dirsync 0 0


What's Kudzu?

[Brian1]

kudzu is an old way redhat / slash early fedora used to automatically edit your fstab file to add the links. It usually failed most of the time. Hal is in Fedora Core 3 and does a better job. If /dev/sda1 exit it will not rewrite it. Still don't use it much. Like the old manually way.

I use the same line and can read, write, delete as a user no problem. Does the pendrive have a write protect switch on it?
Could be corrupt and require a fdisk and format.

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

[leaded]

How do I reformat my thumb drive? Using fdisk, I thought I deleted all the "partitions" then create one and executed but nothing happened.

[garnertr]

I have a externel hard drive (WD 160-G USB) and I can see it in my file browser, I can view it, but I cannot write to it.

My FC3, /etc/fstab entry reads:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbhd vfat umask=000,users,noauto,owner,rw,sync,dirsync 0 0

I can rw as root, but not as my user (garnertr) and my uid=500 (if that helps)...

[imdeemvp]

I dont know which fedora version you are using but if you are in fc3 it should mount and work just like in windoz. If using fc2 or fc1 this may help. (http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1291)

[Inuxlay]

That worked! Thanks a lot guys!

[imdeemvp]

I have a externel hard drive (WD 160-G USB) and I can see it in my file browser, I can view it, but I cannot write to it.

My FC3, /etc/fstab entry reads:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbhd vfat umask=000,users,noauto,owner,rw,sync,dirsync 0 0

I can rw as root, but not as my user (garnertr) and my uid=500 (if that helps)...
Try removing the word "owner". See the how to previous linked.