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ExFat Flash Drive Read Only

I let a friend borrow my 64G Flash Drive and he returned it with a bunch of unwanted files. At first I tried deleting them but all I got was a dull "beep" so I figured I'd just erase the whole thing and reformat. Opened disk utility and it was recognized but the options to erase are greyed out. Looked at the drive's info and it says "Read Only".


I have Paragon's NTSF driver installed thinking that would cure the erase problem but that did nothing. I know no one with a Windows machine so I can't ask someone else to reformat the drive for me.


How do I get the Flash Drive out of read only, erase and reformat to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 3.6GHz 32G RAM 32TB HD Memory

Posted on Jul 28, 2013 5:10 PM

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24 replies

Dec 7, 2013 12:20 PM in response to TheOS2Guy

Unibeast is set up on a Mac, but it can be any Mac boot disk. No Windows involved, promise. I made the mistake of thinking I needed Windows and it made the process 1000 time worse.


Here's what to do.


If your mac has a OS X installer DVD, start up from the installler DVD, and as soon as it's booted up from the disk, go to the menubar and select "Disk Utility." Now that you're booted from an installer disk, that 64G flash card won't be read-only. You can go ahead and format it however you like.


If you don't have a bootable OS X installer DVD, then go to macupdate.com and get "DiskMaker X" - it's a handy little utility for creating OS X bootable thumb drives. Then go into the AppStore and re-download the Mavericks installer.


Once the Mavericks installer is done downloading (it's an app called "Install OS X Mavericks" in your /Applications folder), run DiskMaker X.


When it asks, "Which version?" click the 10.9 button.


Then it'll say it found a copy of the Mavericks installer in /Applications, do you wish to use that copy? Click "Use this copy."


Then it'll ask "Which kind of disk will you use?" You should see a button saying "An 8 GB USB thumb drive" - click that one.


It'll present you with a list of thumb drives plugged into your Mac. Ideally there should only be one to choose. Select it and "Choose this disk."


Next, it'll warn you that you're about to completely wipe the thumb drive clean and overwrite it with a bootable Mavericks installer. Click "Erase then create the disk."


Finally, it'll let you know you're about to need your admin password. Click "Continue."


Now it'll start the process. Your thumb drive will disappear from the desktop, and will be temporarily replaced with a generic disk icon with a gobbledygook name. Other windows will open and a progress indicator (which doesn't actually indicate the progress) will appear. The whole process can take 20 minutes, or more. Remember, it's reformatting the drive then copying over 5GB of data to a thumb drive. Not the fastest read/write speeds...


It may occaisinally pull focus back to DiskMaker X script, and it'll ask for an admin password at some point, but you can use Safari or Mail or some other non-fullscreen app while it's doing all this, if you'd like.


Once it's all said and done, you'll have a bootable thumb drive with a 10.9 Mavericks installer, which is something nice to have, in and of itself. For now, though, all you need to do is to reboot from it, and just like if you had a bootable DVD, once it's running, go to the Utilities menu and select Disk Utility and then you should be able to format that pesky ExFAT 64G flash drive.

Dec 7, 2013 5:27 PM in response to Kurt Murray

I followed your instructions altho I had tried using a previous ThumbDrive boot disk and using the utility function without success, I erased the 8G thumbdrive and used the DiskMaker X to create a new one. I rebooted from that Flash Boot Drive, went to the Disk Utility with the 65G ExFat thumbdrive plugged in. It came up in the Disk Utility but remained greyed out or "read-only". I was able to "verify" that the drive was working but beyond that I cannot erase or partition the thumbdrive. The drive itself reports itself as MS-DOS while the subdrive reports itself as Ex-Fat. Of course both are greyed out.


I can only assume that I need to find a Windows machine and try reformatting it using that system. Unfortunately I know of no one with a Windows system. My world consists of Mac people but I keep the thumbdrive on my keychain just in case I run into someone with a laptop configured with Windows.


Thanks for the attempt and advice. It was very nice of you to provide a layman's walk through of creating the boot disk.

Dec 9, 2014 7:20 PM in response to Bob the Tomato

I was having the exact same problem with my PNY micro SDXC 128gb. It was read only and I couldn't write, erase or repair it. I was using the micro to standard adapter that came with it. However I had another adapter from an old micro SD I had back in the day. I swapped out the adapter and BINGO, write permissions now appear.


not sure if this is the case with everyone else but I hope this helps some of you

Apr 24, 2016 2:26 PM in response to TheOS2Guy

I had this problem with a Samsung 64 GB microSDXC UHS-I card. Following @polostefano's answer, I tried another adapter that I knew worked with another SD card. Still no joy.


However, I also have seen many posts suggesting that if you put the card in a phone or camera (ie, not using an adapter), it would work.


So, I have a USB SD card reader device. I put the little card in that - and VOILA! It's working great!


I don't know what the deal is with the adapters (clarifying: UNLOCKED adapters) that won't let one use the card. People are sending them back to the manufacturer (and it doesn't matter which: SanDisk, Pny, Samsung, ...) only to have the new card fail using the adapter again shortly after getting it. Again, putting the little card in some device that doesn't require an adapter seems to fix the problem most of the time!

ExFat Flash Drive Read Only

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