All drives flashed by Balena are read-only

I’m trying to flash HiveOS with etcher, which requires editing one of its files after it has been flashed, at least according to this tutorial.

I can’t find an option in the Etcher app which would allow a read/write flash. Is this possible? If not, how did this same tutorial get it to work?

Use ctrl + f Optional Step — Farm Hash
to see where I’m confused. The article makes it seem as if the read only issue doesn’t exist at all.

Thanks.

Etcher isn’t producing a read-only flash; this isn’t a thing that can be done. All Etcher will do is write the contents of the image to the disk. You may need to unplug the drive and replug it for your OS to recognise the partition layout from the image after flashing.

It seems to have made the flashed partition read only, even after doing what you said. I have flashed two separate USBs, both have the same issue

Will some kind of image help?

Hi, I have a few questions that will help get to the bottom of this:

  • What OS are you using?
  • Which USB sticks have you flashed?
  • Do you see the same behaviour flashing other images?
  • How have you determined that the drive is read-only?
  • What version of Etcher did you use?
  • Do you see the same behaviour flashing a different storage media, for example an SD card?

Having this same issue. Responses are below.

  • What OS are you using?
    Catalina 10.15.7

  • Which USB sticks have you flashed?
    Microcenter 32GB (2 sticks both read only)
    SP SSD A55 128GB (2 are read only)

  • Do you see the same behaviour flashing other images?
    Yes

  • How have you determined that the drive is read-only?
    Cannot write to the disk. Mac Finder also shows the read only icon in the lower left corner.

  • What version of Etcher did you use?
    1.5.116

  • Do you see the same behaviour flashing a different storage media, for example an SD card?
    Yes

Any updates? having the same issue.

I am also having the same issue an retried many times.

I ran into the same issue trying to flash the HiveOS image to a USB drive using Etcher and ended up figuring it out. The issue is not with Etcher. You get the same results using the command line utility “dd”.

The issue is that the HiveOS image creates the HIVE partition using an NTFS filesystem. By default this does not work with MacOS. You can read the files but not write them. You can get MacOs to work with an NTFS filesystem though. I followed this: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/solving-the-read-only-external-hard-drive-problem-on-your-mac/amp/ and it worked for me.

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