Linux: How to write to thumb drive?

[TallPaul]

I am running Linux Mint Maya Mate and when I put in a USB drive I can move files from the drive to the computer, but not from the computer to the drive because it says the drive is Read Only. Yet on the Windows OS computer I can easily write to the drive.

If I look at properties it says of the USB storage device that it's file system is MSDOS. Under permissions it comes up blank and says the permissions could not be determined.

Unlike the USB storage device, my MP3 player works fine though. Oddly, yesterday I could not write to it on my Linux computer, but I just tried it and it works fine.

 

[Cardenio327]

I too am attempting to migrate from Windows. Typing from Lubuntu 13.10 and downloading Mint 16 Cinnamon at this very moment.

I would venture to guess that you need to format the thumbdrive to NTFS or FAT32 then try again. It can be formatted with Linux or Windows. In Windows open 'My Computer', right click on the thumbdrive, select format. Within the dialogue box there will be an option to change the type of file system.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Your thumb drives may be formatted as NTFS or some other that cannot be written, by default, by Mint. (Most OS's can read *and* write to NTFS these days but some do not turn on writing by default. My MacBook Pro does not write to NTFS unless I go tinker around in the command line.)

Even exFAT, which Microsoft produced specifically for thumb drives, requires a driver to be installed in all but some of the latest Linux kernels. I want to say that from the Ubuntu family 13.04 onward has the exFAT driver baked right into the kernel.

 

[Dave Sherman]

It sounds like it may be using NTFS file system. I tried my thumb drive in Linux Mint and have no trouble writing to it, but I know it's formatted FAT32.

If you open a terminal window and type df -T, it should show all the volumes that are attached, and you should see an entry that looks like /dev/sdb1 with exactly what type of filesystem it's using (ntfs or vfat)

 

[TallPaul]

Just did the df -T and both the Coby MP3 and the Sandisk USB storage device are formatted the same, VFAT. Can write to the Coby but not the Sandisk.

 

[TallPaul]

Well, Clutchdisc reformatted it on his Windows computer to vfat (same as before but used a very slow formatting process) and now I can write to it on Linux. Funny, the terminal mode now shows it as vfat instead of VFAT. Must be a difference.

Thanks.