USB switched suddenly to read only mode?

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Level 1

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USB switched suddenly to read only mode?

I use a USB stick for quite a few things as my storage is nearly full on my mac with 'system' annoyingly taking up 90gbs of my storage which I can't seem to free up (but that's another problem).

I tried to access something on my USB yesterday but it's now in read only mode and I don't know what to do.

I've copied across the most important stuff to reformat it and not have to worry about losing too much stuff, yet when I try to erase the drive to reformat it, it won't let me.

I'm not sure what's going on.

Also it's saying my USB was created in 1980??

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Mar 26, 2021 7:38 AM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

Level 9

69,362 points

Mar 26, 2021 7:12 PM in response to rhianna0811

Try running Disk Utility First Aid on the USB stick.

It sounds like the USB stick may have failed. If you are using macOS 10.13+, then click on "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. If this doesn't work, then try using a Windows PC to erase the USB stick since Disk Utility sometimes gets confused if something happens to the partition table or file system. If you are unable to erase the physical drive, then most likely the USB has failed.

FYI, the quality of USB sticks is extremely poor and many of them do silently corrupt data from time to time with bit errors. Never trust your important data to a USB stick especially the only copy.

You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer and all external media which contains important and unique information.

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USB switched suddenly to read only mode?

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