USB Flash Drive Unmounted When Inserted

Hello.

I have been using Zorin OS 5.1 for about a month, and until yesterday I was able to successfully mount 16Gb USB flash drive (by simply inserting the drive into the USB port), write/print to it (LibreOffice, CUPS, etc.) , and unmount it (right-clicking on the drive's icon and selecting "Eject" or "Safely Remove Drive"). Now, whenever I insert the drive I get a message telling me that it is now safe to remove it. If I try to open a file on the drive I get a message indicating that I can can open only a read-only copy; if I try to write a file to it I get a message indicating that access to the media was denied.

This behavior doesn't abate when I unmount it using "Eject" or "Safely Remove Drive" and then re-insert it into the port. The same is true when I try the steps outlined in http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_H ... s-usb.html.

I can only speculate that late Monday night, in a sleep-deprived state, I had brain cramp and removed the drive without properly unmounting it. What can I do to resolve the mounting/unmounting problem? The sleep-deprivation is another matter.

Thanks.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

did you have the drive in another PC and just pulled it out??.

Regards Wolfman:)

Hello Wolfman,

No, it was my singular Zorin OS system (on a laptop that also houses Windows 7 - though I don't use that much anymore).

In the meantime, I have installed separately Ubuntu and Kubuntu. While I didn't have the unmounted when inserted problem on those systems, neither system let me write anything to the drive - which Windows 7 would - but the "read-only" problem was limited to LibreOffice files.

I'm not exactly certain that I pulled it out without properly ejecting it - given the sleep deprivation - but it's my only plausible explanation for the result.

Thanks.

Jeff

UPDATE:

I solved my problem by reformatting my flash drive (as NTFS instead of the default FAT32).

Now I have another problem. I'll post that one to the list if I can't resolve it in a couple of days.

Wolfman, thank you for your help. -- Jeff