Being able to 'Read & Write' on an external hard drive on the Mac

Hi there,
I can't seem to be able to add things to my external hard drives on my MacBook Pro. I can with my USB stick but not with the larger external hard drives. Could someone help me change the permission settings to allow me to 'Read & Write' rather than just 'Read Only'.
Thanks
Nadia

How is this drive formatted? If it is NTFS then it is read-only. In order to use it on the Mac you will have to repartition and reformat the drive. On the other hand if it is properly partitioned and formatted for the Mac and the drive has become read-only then there is a different solution.
For the first alternative:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. 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 (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
For the second alternative:
Fix No Access Permissions on HD.

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Being able to 'Read & Write' on an external hard drive on the Mac

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