USB read-only after Windows use

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

I’m frequently putting the same USB stick in a Windows 10 machine and back into my EndeavourOS machine, and although I’m super careful trying to “remove safely” from Windows 10, it seems I can’t avoid having the USB stick end up in a state where EndeavourOS refuses to make changes to the drive.

The only way around it right now is to format the USB drive every time and that’s extremely dangerous to do so frequently since it opens up the possibilty of human error and formatting the wrong drive one day.

Can I just force the USB drive to be readable somehow? I accept the consequences, I’m just testing builds (copying files to the drive).

2

An alternative solution: Use a sync tool like Syncthing (or Syncthing-fork) instead of manually transferring files all the time.

That is, assuming the machines are connected to the same network.
Though, I think this last part isn’t a requirement. Just needs some extra setup.

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Yeah, I’ve tried KDE Connect, Warpinator, LocalSend etc. But since I’m already using Syncthing for file sync now I started it as file transfer solution. Create folder name with something like “File Transfer” on your devices (set File Versioning as None) and you’re done. Drag and drop to copy/move files. The transfer rate is not as fast as others but you’ll (almost) never experience file corruption.

  • For personal daily used devices : Syncthing
  • For sending files to family or friends use LocalSend (in my experience KDEConnect corrupts files when you send very large files)
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Thanks guys, it had crossed my mind to use the network, but last time I looked into Linux ↔ Windows file sharing, I just remember it being something I didn’t want to deal with right now.

I didn’t realise that someone made a hassle free solution but it makes perfect sense. I will try SyncThing and let you know how I go. Ran the Linux one and it looks nice and easy but I will have to actually try it out between the two machines tomorrow.

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5

What filesystem is on your usb drive? if it is ntfs this kind of issues is common

Use fat32 or exFat, that should in theory always work

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Oh really? I always formatted as ntfs because it’s a 64gb usb drive so I didn’t want to encounter any limitations of old file systems.

Just reading up on that now, looks like exFat is the go!

I’m still going to try the file sharing, and then will update the thread with one final post where I write about both solutions and credit the people who posted them. That may be a couple days now because the Windows computer has died, probably a bad PSU.