Time Machine - External Hard Drive Read only error

Just recently got a Iomega 1TB MiniMax FireWire 800 USB 2.0 Desktop Hard Drive and used Time Machine to backup my computer. This was my first time using Time Machine and it successfully backed up 350 GBs. It continued to do backups every hour. When I turned my computer off and then turned it on the next day Time Machine wouldn't allow me to do a backup because it said the hard drive was read only. When I checked info it said it was read/write. I used disc utility to verify disc it said it could not verify disc do a disc repair. Disc repair failed and it said reformat disc. I erased the hard drive tried again and I got the same error message. The hard drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I searched this forum and the trouble shooting links and couldn't find anything on how to correct this. Any help on this problem would be appreciated.

See the following:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Similar Messages

Time machine failure hard drive read only

Hi
I have a seagate 4tb hard drive backing up my 4tb of internal hard drives on my 2008 mac pro. It has worked perfectly for a couple of months.
A couple of weeks ago, for no reason whatsoever that I can discern, the time machine back up failed and the message is that it is read only and I should repair or erase the disk using disk utility. As the back up is over usb 2 only and takes about two days I dont want to do this particularly as I don't see how this will convert the disk back into a read and write disk.
The info on the disk, which I can't seem to change is
you can only read
system read and write
wheel (whatever that is) read and write
and everyone read only
I have tried just moving a file on to it but it is rejected as read only. I can't see any write protect button on the drive itself.
Could you please advise as to whether this is a known macos issue or is this a drive fault. It is strange that I can't seem to alter the permissions in get info.
Any help appreciated
thank you

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for details.

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

What kind of repair?

Time Machine won't back up to my ext hard drive - 'read only' error

My (two week old) external hard drive that is used for Time Machine has just given me this warning: Files can't be copied onto the backup disc because it appears to be 'read only'. It tells me to repair or reformat the disk using Disk Utility. I have my doubts as this is the third EHD that has gone this way over the past month. I use an iMac, OS 10.6.8. Is this a Time Machine issue that I can fix via changing some settings - I can't realisticallly accept that two top end La Cies and one brand new G-Tech G-Drive have corrupted in one month due to their own faults. Can anyone shed any light on this? I'd be really grateful.

Please look over Time Machine FAQs & Time Machine Troubleshooting. If you don't have any luck finding your issue then please repost in the Snow Leopard forum, because TM is part of OS X and there is a TM section in the Snow Leopard forums that is where you are more likely to find someone that has the expertise you may need.

How to create mirror backup of my Time Machine external hard drive

I am running Time Machine back ups for my MacPro with OS 10.8.5, purchased in 2008. I am saving the Time Machine back ups to an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 2TB external hard drive. I have a second 2TB external hard drive and would like to mirror what's backing up to the first 2TB external hard drive. I feel that it gives me better odds if I plug the hard drive in one day and it isn't recognized, or some calamity happens to my computer and everything goes downhill from there, which seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Currently I store the external hard drives in a safe in my home between uses. They don't spend 24/7 hooked to my computer.
I would like to know that I always have two copies of the same Time Machine back up on hand.
Thanks,

Drives fail. Often in the first six months, and after that, they may last 5-6 years. Or not. A weak (not just bad) sector block is usually the best indication. Having spare drives on hand should be a must, and rotate primary drives to backup or archive every two years maybe after giving them a long erase - to ease your fears and hopefully find the worst possible error.
RAID6 is useful for holding large video catalogues and projects - and then mirror your RAID6 to another RAID6.
SoftRAID 5 http://www.softraid.com will scan drives in the background for weak blocks, monitor I/O better for read/write errors (without impacting performance is important) and can be well worth its $140 ish price (worth it in tech support alone, too if ever you need it)
A couple programs will write the SMART status to the system log and show the numbers of used and remaining spare blocks. That is something a large study of disk storage revealed. And in today's world, storage needs and the need to "change the light blubs" on a basis before one fails is a must in massive data cloud and big data mining.
Apple's Mac Pro and the RAID card is not "hot swap" capable, though the motherboard in the Classic Mac Pro actually could as designed by Intel. And hot swapping is a handy feature - create a 3 drive mirror array, pull one, you still have two and let SoftRAID do a better rebuild in the background adding a new 3rd mirror drive.
Two drive mirrors are weak and not all that great, in my estimation.
TimeMachine is there to get people to at least have a automatic ish do it and forget it, hopefully, versus none at all. A good beginning. It also turns 8 this September and has slowly, gradually, hopefully, matured. I might buy Disk Warrior 5 if only to check the backup catalogue for integrity though at $99 a waste for most and better spent on another backup drive or something. But you never want to be in need of Data Rescue 4, another $99 product.

How to stop my Time Machine external hard drive preventing iMac from sleeping?

I have a late 2012 iMac, and have discovered that sometimes (I haven't noticed a pattern of when it doesn/doesn't happen) the computer will immediately wake up after I set it to Sleep (Apple Menu>Sleep). Through elimination I have found that it is the the USB 3.0 external hard drive I use as a Time Machine back-up that is the culprit; unplugging it then allows the computer to sleep. If I unplug it, then plug it back in later on, this normally solves the problem for a while, but not forever. This same Hard Drive didn't cause the wake problem on my previous '08 iMac.
A big issue is that when the machine immediately wakes from sleep, the display stays off (until I move the mouse) - this is good from a power saving point of view, but means I don't know if/when the machine is immediately waking from sleep (I have to listen to the fan when setting it to Sleep mode to hear if it has actually woken back up).
I've searched the forums, but can't find another poster with the same problem as myself. Can anyone advise a course for me to pursue to prevent this from happening?
Thanks. Jamie

Hi Frank. Nope, I'm still having the same symptoms; the plugged in external drive (TIme Machine) will wake the machine up a couple of seconds after it winding down when put to into sleep mode. Ejecting the drive and then sleeping the machine works. After plugging it in again to do a Time machine backup, it will allow the computer to sleep soundly for the first few sessions (eg a few days of sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking, etc), but then it will then suddenly start preventing it from sleeping again after a while.
It seems I'm fortunate in my case that the display stays dark (or off?) when the machine has been woken from sleep, but this was actually preventing me from knowing the machine wasn't in fact asleep for quite some time; I only eventually cottoned on because there wasn't any delay when 'waking' my machine (which there normally is). I would then have to carefully listen to the spinning fans to know if in fact it had gone to sleep or not.
So, to summarise, unfortunately no, I haven't solved this yet. If anyone else has a solution, please let us know?
Also, I've noticed occasionally after waking that there is a relatively quiet 'crackle' sound (kind of electrical sounding) from the bottom-right area of the machine. This goes on every so often for about 30mins. I see this is also an issue with other people's late 2012 iMacs, but I've not seen if anyone has a solution to it?

Time Machine & External Hard Drive on an Extended Network

My home network starts with an AirPort Extreme 802.11ac and the wireless network is extended (hard-wired via cat 5 cable) with an AirPort Extreme 802.11n (the second router is setup as a slave). Everything works great with the exception of Time Machine being able to locate the external hard drive I have connected via USB to the master AirPort Extreme 802.11ac.
Before I extended the network, I had only the AirPort Extreme 802.11n and the external hard drive was connected to it. Time Machine worked perfectly. However, since I have setup the new configuration, things are not working smoothly. Time Machine can see the external hard drive, however, when I select it and a backup starts running, Time Machine says it can't find the backup disk after a few minutes.
Must I be connected to the wireless signal of the master AirPort Extreme 802.11ac for Time Machine to work? Do I need to change a setting in one or both routers? Any suggestions? Thanks for the help.

The external drive is Mac formatted for Time Machine. Your gaming console and PC won't be able to read its format.
If you are determined to use it for both purposes, you can partition the drive in Disk Utility. Format the PC partition for MS-DOS or whatever is required for your gaming console. You may or may not have sufficient space for both partitions. If you do not you will have to erase your Time Machine backups.

My Time Machine external hard drive is not recognised anymore under 10.9.1

Hi,
I am running 10.9.1 on my MBP13" mid 2010.
I plugged in my external hard drive (Western Digital Elements 500GB portable drive) and it is no longer recognised.
This has been going on for a couple of weeks.
TM says its not connected.
Icon not on desktop
not seen in disk utilities.
I have tried it on another machine (iMac 2006 10.6) and it is not recognised either.
Tried rebooting with the drive plugged in and without.
attempted to install WD Quick Formatter and this saw the drive but was unable to reformat as it said that it was 'in use'
I thought that this might be TM so I disassociated it from TM - Still No Go.
Any Ideas appreciated.

katlandsf wrote:
I have a 750gb hard drive that Time Machine backs up on. It's been for going strong for over 2 years now. My hard drive is filling up, I only have 35gb left. Is it okay for me to delete many of the old backups dated from 2 years ago? I really only need to keep the last 6-12 months. Not sure how to handle this.
You don't have to do anything.
When Time Machine is out of room, it will automatically delete the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones. If you have the +Notify after old backups are deleted+ box checked in Time Machine Preferences > Options, you'll see the message in the blue box in #C4 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If you do want to manually delete some backups, you can do that, but only via Time Machine. See #12 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time machine external hard drive stalls start up

I am relatively new to Apple hardware and this is my first post.
I have been using a 1TB Iomega Select external hard drive which I use with Time Machine. All has been well for the first few weeks. However recently I have noticed when I switch on my iMac it freezes at the white screen. I also noticed that the hard drive was spinning so I disconnected the power (there is no on/off switch). Immediately the Apple logo appeared on the screen and the iMac started up as normal. However on reconnecting the power to the external hard drive, though the disc starts spinning the iMac does not recognise it. The only way to resolve the latter seems to be to disconnect and then reconnect the USB cable.
I "repaired" the Iomega drive using the disc utility, which went through the process but said it was OK anyway.
Any ideas how I can resolve this? On a related issue are there good alternatives to Time Machine, I don't really need it to back up every hour?
Sorry for the long post
Chas

Chas F wrote:
I am relatively new to Apple hardware and this is my first post.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You might want to upgrade to 10.6.4; there have been some fixes since 10.6.2 that might help. You can go directly to 10.6.4 via the "combo" update. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
I "repaired" the Iomega drive using the disc utility, which went through the process but said it was OK anyway.
Good.
Any ideas how I can resolve this?
Are you shutting your Mac down daily? If so, it's probably better to let it sleep instead. See Sleeping your Mac vs. Powering it Down.
Does the same thing happen when your Mac wakes from sleep? If so, and if the upgrade doesn't help, try removing the check from the +Put the hard disk(s) to sleep ...+ box in +System Preferences > Energy Saver.+ Some externals respond to that setting, some don't. See if yours does, and whether it still doesn't power up properly.
You might also want to check with Iomega, to see if you can disable or adjust it's internal settings, or if there are any firmware upgrades.
On a related issue are there good alternatives to Time Machine, I don't really need it to back up every hour?
Time Machine was designed and optimized to do that, and will protect you best that way. When your internal HD fails (they all do, sooner or later) or something else awful happens, you won't lose more than an hour's work. Plus, if you accidentally delete or change something, or a file gets corrupted, there's a much better chance of recovering a previous version.

Airport, Time Machine, External Hard Drive

I have 2 MBPs in the house. I would like to set up an external hard drive to the airport extreme base station that both MBPs would use to store and access photos and music. All documents would be kept on the individual notebooks. I would like to use the same external hard drive for time machine backup for both units.
Can this be done? Do I need anything special? Is there a good drive for this?
Thanks for any suggestions and info.

currently time machine does not officially work over a network router (there are some posts about a work around). The other way to do this is to hook the external to one of the MBPs, then both can use it. Or at least thats the way I understand it to work. I only have it for one MBP.

Fixing Time Machine/External Hard Drive

My Time Machine stopped working in April, and I couldn't get it working again. I thought I was going to have to buy another External Hard Drive, but I've been putting that off. Anyway, I finally decided that I had to either fix it today or buy another External Hard Drive. I called Apple. TOGETHER (It took both of us), we stumbled across the solution: REPLUG THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE CABLE INTO ANOTHER USB PORT. That did it, and Time Machine is working again. Not only that, I then did the same thing with my on-strike printer and it is now back on duty. So, I now have a list of three things that should be tried before panicking: (1) Turn the computer OFF and then ON again. (2) Replug the cable into another USB port. (3) Try another browser [Sometimes website incompatibility is the problem].

I finally bought another external hard drive. No more problems now.

Time Machine- External Hard Drive Format

Hey, so today i got my first external hard drive. So to make sure it worked i plugged into my mac, and time machine popped up saying if i wanted to back up my machine onto it. I thought alright sounds good, and did a back up and made the External HD the time machine disk.
But then i plugged this HD into a windows machine, and it doesn't even acknowledge its there. So i looked at the format and realize its Mac OS Extended.
So how do i change it so that both Mac and windows recognize it, and so I can use Time Machine to back up onto it?
Thanks for the help

So how do i change it so that both Mac and windows recognize it, and so I can use Time Machine to back up onto it?
You need to partition the drive into Mac OS Extended and FAT32 or NTFS partitions, or install a tool such as MacDrive or HFSExplorer into Windows. Time Machine will only back up to a Mac OS Extended disk.
(45751)

Time Machine & external hard drives not used daily

I have a question about Time Machine and external hard drives that I used for storing digital files. I do not need to turn on these drives every day. Or even every week. Is Time Machine going to "forget" them (delete their files from backups) if I don't turn them on regularly? What do I do to make sure they are safely backed up and that they stay backed up even if they aren't turned on every day?

As I said, then, "Time Machine will simply pick up wherever it left off." Just be sure to properly eject the drive before disconnecting or shutting off.
The "speed" question is a new one not present in your original post. You can address that in the following:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions About Mac Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utility is: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption. Drive Genius provides additional tools not found in Disk Warrior for defragmentation of older drives, disk repair, disk scans, formatting, partitioning, disk copy, and benchmarking.
Four outstanding sources of information on Mac maintenance are:
1. OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney.
2. Mac maintenance Quick Assist
3. Maintaining Mac OS X
4. Mac Maintenance Guide
Periodic Maintenance
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) See Mac OS X- About background maintenance tasks. If you are running Leopard or later these tasks are run automatically, so there is no need to use any third-party software to force running these tasks.
If you are using a pre-Leopard version of OS X, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced after Tiger. (These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion and should not be installed.)
Defragmentation
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive except when trying to install Boot Camp on a fragmented drive. But you don't need to buy third-party software. All you need is a spare external hard drive and Carbon Copy Cloner.
Cheap and Easy Defragmentation
You will have to backup your OS X partition to an external drive, boot from the external drive, use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat your hard drive back to a single volume, then restore your backup to the internal hard drive. You will use Carbon Copy Cloner to create the backup and to restore it.
1. Get an empty external hard drive and clone your internal drive to the
       external one.
2. Boot from the external hard drive.
3. Erase the internal hard drive.
4. Restore the external clone to the internal hard drive.
Clone the internal drive to the external drive
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the left side dropdown menu.
4. Be sure the Block Copy button is not depressed or is ghosted.
5. Click on the Clone button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the upward pointing arrow button.
After startup do the following:
Erase internal hard drive
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the
       mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the
       drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is
       failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be
       reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the
       DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the
       drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended
       (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to
       GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait
       until the process has completed.
Restore the clone to the internal hard drive
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the left side dropdown menu.
4. Be sure the Block Copy button is not selected or is ghosted.
5. Click on the Clone button.
Destination means the internal hard drive. Source means the external startup drive.
Note that the Source and Destination drives are swapped for this last procedure.
Malware Protection
As for malware protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. Starting with Lion, Apple has included built-in malware protection that is automatically updated as necessary. To assure proper protection, update your system software when Apple releases new OS X updates for your computer.
Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection:
1. Mac Malware Guide.
2. Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware
3. Macintosh Virus Guide
For general anti-virus protection I recommend only using ClamXav, but it is not necessary if you are keeping your computer's operating system software up to date. You should avoid any other third-party software advertised as providing anti-malware/virus protection. They are not required and could cause the performance of your computer to drop.
Cache Clearing
I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX 2.4.3, Mountain Lion Cache Cleaner 7.0.9, Maintenance 1.6.8, or Cocktail 5.1.1 that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache files can cause slowness, kernel panics, and other issues. Although this is not a frequent nor a recurring problem, when it does happen there are tools such as those above to fix the problem.
If you are using Snow Leopard or earlier, then for emergency cleaning install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. (AppleJack works with Snow Leopard or earlier.)
Installing System Updates or Upgrades
Repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand.
Update your backups in case an update goes bad.
Backup and Restore
Having a backup and restore strategy is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your computer. Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. You can never have too many backups. Don't rely on just one. Make several using different backup utilities. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
     1. Carbon Copy Cloner
     2. Get Backup
     3. Deja Vu
     4. SuperDuper!
     5. Synk Pro
     6. Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance and backup and restore.
Always have a current backup before performing any system updates or upgrades.
Final Suggestions
Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity or 20 GBs, whichever is greater, as free space. Avoid installing utilities that rely on Haxies, SIMBL, or that alter the OS appearance, add features you will rarely if ever need, etc. The more extras you install the greater the probability of having problems. If you install software be sure you know how to uninstall it. Avoid installing multiple new software at the same time. Install one at a time and use it for a while to be sure it's compatible.
Additional reading may be found in:
1. Mac OS X speed FAQ
2. Speeding up Macs
3. Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
4. Essential Mac Maintenance: Get set up
5. Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines
6. Five Mac maintenance myths
7. How to Speed up Macs
8. Myths of required versus not required maintenance for Mac OS X
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.
Most if not all maintenance is for troubleshooting problems. If your computer is running OK, then there isn't really a thing you need to do except repair the hard drive and permissions before installing any new system updates.

Time machine external hard drive in windows not working.

I recently bought a Western Digital external hard drive to use with time machine so that I would have my laptop backed up. When I set up the time machine, it had to format my hard drive, erasing the WD files that were on the drive. I was able to continue using it as an external storage device on the Mac side of my laptop, but when trying to use it on the windows side, it wont show up in My Computer. I'm starting to wonder if I will be unable to use this external drive on anything other than a Mac now that it is set up as my Time Machine.
If that is the case, is there a way that I can reset my drive to not show up as my Time Machine Disk.
Thanks,
JT

If you're going to use the drive on both platforms, does it need to be set up first on the PC, allocating 1/2? to Windows NTFS format, then disable/reset/delete Time Machine backups doing the Mac HFS format thing on remainder of External?
Setup on my Acomdata 7200rpm External is Mac 150GB HFS, Windows 150GB NTFS. On Windows side, is Vista, W7 (32 &64Bit) and recently my daughter's HP Laptop XP which posed a problem until I found that NtBackup.Msi was in VALUEADD folder on the Windows XP install CD. Also available from Microsoft if no install CD. NtBackup makes a .BKF string of the hard drive, runs maybe a little slower than Vista & Windows 7 Backup/Restore Maint. Long time since I restore a .BKF but think it requires an OS - unlike Vista + Windows 7 where the install Disk will retore from External in ~30 minutes.
I have not figured out how to get Leopard restored short of format, then complete (re)install with Time Machine restore kicking in at the end of that process. Takes a great deal of time and some things need fixing after completion. Wondering if Snow Leopard/Disk Utility has any improvements on this score. Refuse to pay for anything that I consider to be intrisically necessary to use of product.

External hard drive no longer found after becoming full from time machine, External hard drive no longer found after becoming full from time machine

Hi, I have been using an external hard drive as a backup for my Mac using Time Machine. I was under the impression that once the backup drive became full, it would start to delete previous versions of the backup. However, instead of doing that, it has just stopped working and I now cannot access the hard drive via a Mac or a PC. On the PC, it does at least show up in that it will allow me to disconnect it safely but I cannot do anything else with it.
I am now looking to reformat it, and start again from scratch - but can't do this as it doesn't show up anywhere. Does anyone have any advice about how I can get this working again?
Thanks.

Can you see the drive in Disk Utility? If so, try selecting it and using the Mount button in the top menu. You can also run repair disk and repair permissions.

Time Machine - External Hard Drive Read only error

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