General :: External Hard Drive Mounted As Read-only

I administer a remote server via SSH that runs CentOS 5.5. I have been unsuccessful in all my attempts to write to two different external USB hard drives with a single ext3 partition when logged in as root.

When attempting to create a "test" directory I get one of two messages:

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Both drives *appear* to have filesystem issues. When I run an fsck on either drive, I get:

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Keep in mind this is a newly-formatted, empty drive.

Not putting stock in the odds that I've had two hard drives (different sizes and brands) with the exact same hardware problem, I'm going to assume this is a software issue, although maybe it isn't. Hence, my post in "Linux - General". I've heard talk elsewhere of controller (chipset) issues coming into play. Is this valid?

Okay, here's the information you'll need to make a diagnosis....

Here's the output of a "df -h" command:

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Here's the contents of my /etc/fstab:


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Here's the output of "cat /etc/mtab":

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Here's the output of a mount command:

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Here's the output of fdisk on the device in question:

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The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 48641.

There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with:

1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)

2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help):

I've got someone with access to the box if necessary. But it might take days to implement solutions since this isn't his full-time job. Remote solutions are, therefore, preferable.