Drive has become read only

Support & Help Requests
1

Hi

My DATA drive has suddenly become read only. I can't think of anything that I have done to cause this. When i right click in caja it wont let me create folder or move to trash.

Any ideas why this might happen and how to fix it?

2

The most probable reason is that there are some errors on drive and it has been mounted in read-only mode.

  • Have a look at your /etc/fstab contents and verify that line for your drive contains errors=remount-ro option.
  • Investigate system logs for error messages.
  • Check your disk for problems

https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/disk-check.html.en

1 Like
3

My experience is that the "most probable reason" is simply that caja has become confused (likely as a result of memory corruption, given the quality of the nautilus codebase). I see the same issue every couple of weeks, usually on views that have been open for days and were previously working. caja often crashes not too long after, automatically resolving the problem.

Having it happen to an entire drive is novel though, so in your case ugnvs's suggestion is more likely to be correct, and certainly so if it persists across a reboot. Just in case though:

Often, just opening the same folder in a new window makes it work correctly. If not, restarting caja always fixes it (until the next time it happens). Note that caja is ?always? running in the background even if all the visible file windows are closed, so you need to actually end the process itself ("killall caja", or use system monitor to do it) rather than just closing what you can see on the desktop.

4

Thanks for reply, I have used the disks app which reports drive OK. But I have noticed that there is zzz icon next to drive I guess drive is asleep?

I have tried waking it using disks. This doesn't seem normal.

5

Well, you can try to turn off drive standby mode in Disks utility in drive settings section...

The following link might be interesting