How to format read only ISO 9660 USB drive

[keescase]

Well these usb sticks are sometimes strange things , I have one that I can not boot from unless I put it on a extension cord, really weird.

[joekamprad]

i was getting a cheap usb stick in a supermarket a sof needed one fast.. was sold as 64GB and i wa swondering why it always failed to write data .. checked it and it was fake capacity.. had only 16GB in real..

[MichelN]

The problem is, when you copy over huge files you get a message it’s done. When you click on unmount it says it copies files. So i unplugged it anyway because i thought that was a error.

Turns out the drive locked it self out. Now i just wait when i get approval and sometimes it takes minutes after you hit the unmount icon.

[thefrog]

@MichelN

The problem is, when you copy over huge files you get a message it’s done.

That is why I made this function. It doesn’t release until everything is done (including the writing on to USB)

Whats in your .bashrc

here is a useful function, if you copy to usb thumb drive a lot like I do this makes sure the command isn’t complete until the actual copy has finished on the drive. function xcopy(){ #copy command for external devices. local FILE_2_COPY="$1" local FDESTINATION="$2" rsync -avuhP "$FILE_2_COPY" "$FDESTINATION" && sync } I’ve forever have just used a copy command from history that I already added the && sync to however needing it on other machines making it’s own function made more since

[MichelN]

Thanks, will look into this later

[moxdrox]

Thanks for all your help. Unfortunately nothing helped.

Now searching for a Hammer

[fred666]

That happens a lot.. always check it with F3 as @joekamprad already suggested.

[ricklinux]

As long as I’ve been using usb drives I’ve never had one fail.

[joekamprad]

pure luck

[ricklinux]

I think so.

[joekamprad]

i do not remember that i got many USB drives fail here too but i tent to buy known good brands too.

But sdcards omg they die like one day flies here..

[ricklinux]

You can’t even use gparted and create a new partition and then format it?

[moxdrox]

No. It always says read-only.

[MichelN]

Same story like i had. Nothing works. I tried terminal/gparted and so on. I even found commands to force read/write but even that got rejected.

I am afraid your usb is dead.

[moxdrox]

I think so too. Anyway, lesson learned Never put an ISO 9660 image direct via dd on a stick.

[GHUL]

Conclusion

If dd cannot write to an unmounted /dev/sdX,
then no software method exists to make the drive writable again.

The stick has locked itself permanently.

If you want a final verdict, provide:

dmesg | tail -n 50
lsblk -o NAME,RO,MODEL,VENDOR

That’s enough to say with certainty whether there is any hope left.

[GHUL]

USB Drive Became Read-Only After Writing Wrong ISO – Can It Be Rescued?

Short answer:
Yes, this can happen — and very often the drive is permanently locked.
There is no software “+w flag” you can force if the kernel reports the device as read-only at the block-device level.

---

Why This Happens (and Why dd Is Not the Culprit)

If even dd fails on an unmounted device, this is not a filesystem or mount issue.
It means the USB controller itself has switched to read-only mode.

Hardware-Level Write Protection (Very Common)

Many USB flash drives implement a fail-safe mechanism in their controller firmware:

• Too many write errors
• Bad or worn-out flash cells
• Corrupted internal mapping tables

When this happens, the controller deliberately switches to permanent read-only mode to allow data recovery.

This happens below the filesystem level.

Symptoms:

• mkfs →
• fdisk / parted →
• mount -o rw →
• dd →

At this point, the OS cannot override it.

---

Kernel Sees the Device as Read-Only

Check what the kernel thinks:

lsblk -o NAME,RO,SIZE,MODEL
If you see:

sda   1  32G  Generic USB Flash
RO=1 means:
👉 the device itself reports write protection.

Things You Can Still Try (In Realistic Order)
🔧 1. Try Clearing the RO Flag (Rarely Works)

sudo blockdev --getro /dev/sda
sudo blockdev --setrw /dev/sda
sudo blockdev --getro /dev/sda
If it stays 1 → hardware lock.

🔧 2. Remove and Re-enumerate the Device

echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/block/sda/device/delete
Unplug the stick, plug it back in, then:

dmesg | tail -n 30
If you see messages like:

Write Protect is on

or usb-storage: device is read-only
→ that’s definitive.

🔧 3. Raw Write Test (Unforgiving but Final)

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M status=progress
If this fails with:

Read-only file system
→ the controller enforces read-only mode.

🔧 4. USB-Level Reset (Long Shot)

sudo usbreset <bus-device>
Only helps if the controller is temporarily locked (rare).

❌ What Does Not Work (Common Myths)
❌ mount -o remount,rw

❌ fsck

❌ mkfs

❌ repartitioning

❌ different filesystems

❌ different OS (Windows/Linux doesn’t matter)

Once the block device is RO, everything above it is irrelevant.

When the Drive Is Effectively Dead
The drive is beyond recovery if:

lsblk shows RO=1

dd fails on the raw device

dmesg reports write protection

Same behavior on multiple systems

👉 At this point, the drive is intentionally retired by its own firmware.

This is not a bug — it is a data-preservation feature.

[moxdrox]

thanks for the detailed explanation. Bookmarked for future use

[GHUL]

You’re welcome. I’ve lost count of how many USB sticks I’ve attempted to recover over the years, often for other people.
These days I stick to USB-connected SSDs for backups and portable storage — slightly more expensive, but significantly more reliable.

[fred666]

This might sound like an open door but:

never use a thumb drive as backup storage ever!