Curious case of read-only flash drive

[MR ZenWiz]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 12:25 AM, Petter Adsen <petter at synth.no> wrote:
>
> What kernel messages do you get when you insert the drive?
>
> Run 'dmesg -w' in a terminal, insert the drive, and post the lines it
> adds.
>
Well, dmesg -w says that's not a valid option.

However, dmesg shows this:

[1892293.658683] usb 3-7: new high-speed USB device number 72 using xhci_hcd
[1892293.676124] usb 3-7: New USB device found, idVendor=0930, idProduct=6545
[1892293.676133] usb 3-7: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2,
SerialNumber=3
[1892293.676138] usb 3-7: Product: TransMemory-Mx
[1892293.676142] usb 3-7: Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
[1892293.676146] usb 3-7: SerialNumber: FFFFFFFFFFFFEE11200053D9
[1892293.676831] usb-storage 3-7:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[1892293.677153] scsi67 : usb-storage 3-7:1.0
[1892294.675124] scsi 67:0:0:0: Direct-Access     TOSHIBA
TransMemory-Mx   PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[1892294.675776] sd 67:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg7 type 0
[1892294.675948] sd 67:0:0:0: [sdf] 121858560 512-byte logical blocks:
(62.3 GB/58.1 GiB)
[1892294.676358] sd 67:0:0:0: [sdf] Write Protect is off
[1892294.676367] sd 67:0:0:0: [sdf] Mode Sense: 45 00 00 00
[1892294.676701] sd 67:0:0:0: [sdf] Write cache: disabled, read cache:
enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[1892294.977043]  sdf: sdf1
[1892294.978090] sd 67:0:0:0: [sdf] Write Protect is on
[1892294.978098] sd 67:0:0:0: [sdf] Mode Sense: 45 00 80 00
[1892294.978412] sd 67:0:0:0: [sdf] Attached SCSI removable disk

Not sure what all that means, except it seems clear that the write
protect gets turned on during the mounting process, so I'm hoping
there's a way to turn it back off...

Thanks.