USB HD won't mount, somehow read-only?

[snayl]

Longtime troller, first time poster.

I have a 64GB Corsair UFD thumb drive that I cannot use. I don't even care about what is/was on the disk, I just would like it to be available.

While the disk itself shows up in Disk Utility, it can only be Verified (all other options are greyed out). The single partition is JHFS+ (which, I gather, stands for Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) but will not mount. Disk Utility recommends I run First Aid on it, but again Verify Disk is the only option available.

When I run Drive Genius 3.2, the volume shows up but cannot be affected. Mousing over the volume pops up a message that says "The current operatio canot be performed on this drive. The drive is locked (read-only). If this is not an optical drive, please unlock the drive to work with it."

As I cannot mount the drive to unlock it or change its permissions, I even fooled around with Terminal a bit, following internet threads with somewhat similar problems. diskutil list identified the trouble disk as follows:

/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *63.1 GB disk2
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS Lion Survivor 62.7 GB disk2s2


And diskutil info /dev/disk2s2 provided this information:


Device Identifier: disk2s2
Device Node: /dev/disk2s2
Part of Whole: disk2
Device / Media Name: Drive Genius

Volume Name: Lion Survivor
Escaped with Unicode: Lion%FF%FE%20%00Survivor

Mounted: No

File System Personality: Journaled HFS+
Type (Bundle): hfs
Name (User Visible): Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Journal: Unknown (not mounted)
Owners: Disabled

Partition Type: Apple_HFS
OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported
Volume UUID: EF8BF6C2-5899-34ED-BEE2-BFF04F479784

Total Size: 62.7 GB (62738358272 Bytes) (exactly 122535856 512-Byte-Blocks)
Volume Free Space: 0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Blocks)
Device Block Size: 512 Bytes

Read-Only Media: Yes
Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (not mounted)
Ejectable: Yes

Whole: No
Internal: No


I tried various approaches to access or erase the disk, to no avail. I am fairly new to command-line work so I probably didn't get some of the various command options right. Examples of things I tried:

$ sudo diskutil eraseVolume JHFS+ UntitledUFS disk2s2
Started erase on disk2s2 Lion Survivor
Unmounting disk
Erasing
newfs_hfs: cannot create filesystem on /dev/rdisk2s2: Permission denied
Mounting disk
Could not mount disk2s2 with name Lion Survivor after erase
Error: -69832: File system formatter failed

$ sudo diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Jimmy disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Error: -69877: Couldn't open device

$sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2s2
dd: /dev/disk2s2: Permission denied



So, anyone have any thoughts? Thanks.

 

[DewGuy1999]

By any chance is the drive a OS X Lion Recovery drive created with Apple's Lion Recovery Disk Assistant?

 

[snayl]

By any chance is the drive a OS X Lion Recovery drive created with Apple's Lion Recovery Disk Assistant?

No, I had created it myself as a bootable drive, with Lion as the OS. It even worked once or twice before this "Read-only" business began.

 

[DewGuy1999]

No, I had created it myself as a bootable drive, with Lion as the OS. It even worked once or twice before this "Read-only" business began.

Sounds like you know more about Terminal than I do, but maybe this might be useful:

In Disk Utility, open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities), paste the following command, and press Return:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
Then launch Disk Utility and choose Show Every Partition from the new Debug menu.​

 

[snayl]

Sounds like you know more about Terminal than I do, but maybe this might be useful:

In Disk Utility, open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities), paste the following command, and press Return:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
Then launch Disk Utility and choose Show Every Partition from the new Debug menu.​

Okay, I did that, and now there are two partitions that I cannot mount! One is the original, "Lion Survivor," the other is "disk1s1", presumably the Recovery partition that was created when I installed Lion on the thumb drive.

So... now what?

 

[DewGuy1999]

Okay, I did that, and now there are two partitions that I cannot mount! One is the original, "Lion Survivor," the other is "disk1s1", presumably the Recovery partition that was created when I installed Lion on the thumb drive.

So... now what?

I don't know. Can you try mounting it on a different computer, either PC or Mac, maybe then you could erase it and gain access to it with your Mac.

 

[snayl]

I don't know. Can you try mounting it on a different computer, either PC or Mac, maybe then you could erase it and gain access to it with your Mac.

Well, I have a PC running Windows 7, and when I plugged the drive into that machine, it too believed the disk to be locked and read-only. I guess it's possible there is a program that could "override" those settings, but I don't have any high-powered (ie paid) utilities on that machine as I'm not really a PC guy.

Grr.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Well, I have a PC running Windows 7, and when I plugged the drive into that machine, it too believed the disk to be locked and read-only. I guess it's possible there is a program that could "override" those settings, but I don't have any high-powered (ie paid) utilities on that machine as I'm not really a PC guy.

Grr.

I'm not familiar with the particular drive you have, is it possible that it could be locked either via hardware, software or firmware on the drive itself?

 

[snayl]

I'm not familiar with the particular drive you have, is it possible that it could be locked either via hardware, software or firmware on the drive itself?

I suppose anything is possible, but the drive did not come with any software on it. I didn't lock it, and it has no switches to flip (cf. SD card) to lock it or anything.

I'm stumped. I can't believe I am the first person to have this experience with a drive, yet in all of my web searches, anyone who has had this problem has had some way around it, like one tiny aspect of their problem is different from mine. For example, others have been able to force-mount the drive using Terminal, but I cannot (Terminal tells me it's unable to mount it).

 

[DewGuy1999]

I suppose it's possible the drive has gone bad and your "symptoms" are an indication of that. Have you tried checking with Corsair Tech Support, they may know if this is the case or if there is something else you can do.

 

[Shadow K]

I suppose anything is possible, but the drive did not come with any software on it. I didn't lock it, and it has no switches to flip (cf. SD card) to lock it or anything.

I'm stumped. I can't believe I am the first person to have this experience with a drive, yet in all of my web searches, anyone who has had this problem has had some way around it, like one tiny aspect of their problem is different from mine. For example, others have been able to force-mount the drive using Terminal, but I cannot (Terminal tells me it's unable to mount it).

[doublepost=1465556300][/doublepost]Nah, you are not alone. I have the same problem. I haven't found a solution yet to change it from "Read-Only Media: Yes" to "Read-Only Media: No". It should be quite straight forward, but I guess most people just throw the damn USB stick away and get another. FYI I have a Kingston Datatraveller USB 2.0 64GB.
I have seen a lot of people having the same issue only, but no answer to it yet. It's ridiculous.