External hard drive suddenly become read only

For those who have been using an external hard drive on OS X (using NTFS file system) without any problem and suddenly one day the system has started mounting it as a read only file system, this is because the file system right now has some inconsistences.
As it happened last night to me i started googling for a quick solution to solve the problem. But i didnt find anything out there. At least at first glance. So then i checked the system logs of the system in order to get some sort of specific information about why that was happening (in OS you have an application that makes so easy to have a look through the system logs and its in /applications/utilities/console.app). In my case, and i repeat, IN MY CASE, the problem was the following:
21/07/11 18:59:02          kernel          NTFS-fs warning (device /dev/disk1s1, pid 2140): ntfs_system_inodes_get(): $MFTMirr does not match $MFT.  Will not be able to remount read-write.  Run ntfsfix and/or chkdsk.
So afterwards once known the problem, was as easy as to mount the external HD in windows and execute the command chkdsk /f (google about the usage of the tool if dont know how it works).
Alternatively, you have the Linux option using the ntfsfix command, but you will need to install the program before that (if dont have it previously in your system) or otherwise you won't be able to use it (sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs)
Hope it helps.
Marc

I got an error message that my External Hard Drive was now 'read only'. Having scoured the various forums looking for clues as to why it had happened I found numerous suggestions, all of which seemed overly complicated and beyond my basic understanding (I'm old enough to remember when Macs 'just worked').
Anyway, among the suggestions on how to correct this I found what seemed like an overly simplified one - 'Don't switch on your external hard drive until after you've booted up'. Since I tend to leave mine on all the time, I immediately turned it off and back on again and ran Time Machine in hope rather than expectation. Would you believe it? It backed up as normal first time. Hope it works for anyone else having the same problem.

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    This question was solved.
    View Solution.

    Search the Internet and found many others with external drives, Vista, and this issue.
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