Changing permissions locked external drives

I'm not 100% positive I've chosen the correct discussion group, so feel free to direct me elsewhere if I haven't. :>)
Last night I changed the permissions on 3 external hard drives. After I was finished they ALL locked themselves up tight and I can't get into them. I can go into disk utility and verify them (they're all fine) but I cannot repair permissions. Two of them are expendable but I really need to get the data off the third. Does anyone have any suggestions I can try?

Thanks for the suggestion, pullman. I actually managed to find a similar one and did get the drives working finally but I appreciate you taking the time to post the link.

Similar Messages

Unable to change permissions on external drive.

I have an external Firewire drive attached to my PowerMac G5 running 10.5.5. Until the past few days I have been easily accessing (reading and writing) all areas of this drive from my standard non-admin user account since I have the "Ignore ownership on this volume" box checked in the get-info dialogue.
Recently however I have been unable to write to this drive from my non-admin account. When I go to the get-info dialogue, the "Ignore ownership on this volume" box is still checked but that doesn't seem to matter.
I am unable to click on the little padlock icon to change any permissions for any file on this partition (the other partition of this drive is being used by Time Machine, and does not seem to have the "Ignore ownership on this volume" box, and I am able to click on the padlock to make changes).
Any idea what is going on?

I am having a similar problem, but I cannot unlock the drive - as there is no lock icon .The drive is one I bought at Best Buy, and is formatted FAT32. I cannot see anywhere to unlock the drive since I moved to SL. It worked fine before I did the conversion. My other drives (I have 5 total) allow me to read and write, but the problem drive is set to read-only. Any suggestions? The specifics in info are: Kind: Volume, Modified: Yesterday..., Format: MS_DOS (FAT32), Capacity: 319.99 GB, Available: 106.48 GB, etc... Shared Folder is unchecked. Sharing and Permissions says "You can only read"
Thanks for the help!

Cannot change permissions to external hard drives

My usb partitions are all set to "custom" permissions and they cannot be changed no matter what I have tried. I tried creating new Administrator accounts but I cannot assign any new accounts or settings to the partitions. They merely appear on the desktop with a lock icon on them.
What caused this issue is I wanted to remove the annoying "unknown user" under permissions for an external partition. It would not allow me to do that so I tried to apply disk permissions to "all enclosed items". This did not help either so I tried repairing disk permissions and it appeared to start to fix a trillion disk permission errors that would take 2 hours estimated to do so. It suggested canceling and reinstalling the OS after backing up your files.
So I took that suggestion, cancelled the repairing process, but was not able to back up my files because of this change to the partitions that all now appear with a lock.
I have a feeling it will require some Terminal commands to reapply new permissions to the partitions, which I would need help doing.
Thanks for any assistance.

you should never use "apply to enclosed items" on a system drive or on system created folders. that includes the Applications folder, your home directory, your desktop folder etc. Use it only on folders you create yourself. to unlock the external drives you need to run the following terminal commands (copy and paste please)
sudo chflags nouchg /Volumes/"drive name"
sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/"drive name"
Put the name of the affected drive in the above. KEEP the quotes. You'll be prompted to enter your admin password (which you won't see). that's normal.

Changing permissions on external usb hard drive

This is similar to the other thread about USB hard drive permissions, but I didn't want to hijack.
I just got the USB drive working, as root I can read and write to it.
As user it still automounts, but I don't have read write permissions. Here's some output:
[ali@misbarch ~]$ cd /media/disk
[ali@misbarch disk]$ ls -l
total 16
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 2008-05-08 01:14 lost+found
The permissions tab in properties of /disk show:
Owner: root (root)
Access: Read & Write
Group: root
Access: Read only
Others: Read only
So I want to change "Others" to read and write also. I'm not very good with the chmod numbers, I've read the man page, but is that how I would do this? Would a simple
chmod 777 -R /media/disk
be advisable? Or is that just a bad work around and not the proper solution?
Once I got it readable, I copied the info off it as root, and I unmounted it, deleted the partition, created the partition, made an ext3 file system, all as root. Does that have anything to do with it?

stojic wrote:
There is a slightly better solution: change the group of /media/disk to storage, change permissions to 775 and add users that need to be able to write to disk to the storage group (you need to log out and log in that users before changes are visible).
So, as root:
# chgrp storage /media/disk
# chmod 775 /media/disk
# gpasswd -a user_name storage
This way everyone will be able to read the disk, but only root and users in storage group will be able to write to it. Still, if you want everyone to be able to read/write, chmod 777 is a good solution.
Nice solution, thanks, I'm already added to the group storage, but media/disk wasn't part of storage, it was part of root! Thanks for the solution and suggestions.

How do I change the permissions on external drive?

Hi
How do I change "Sharing & Persissions" on an external drive. The drive has a note "You can only read". My account is "read and write" > Fetching is "read and write" and > Everyone is "read only". I want to change Everyone to "read and write".
Thank you
VPH

Try this:
That is if you wnat to open it to everyone.
OT

This is Bad - Locked External Drives

Adobe Photoshop CS3 would not open RAW files so I tried to update. The updater said I had to have Admin permission to use it. I entered my Admin password and it repeated the dialog endlessly asking the same. I repaired permissions, Then checked permissions using <get info> from the root path all the way to the updater application and it was all set to ME <read and write>. Tried to uninstall CS3 Suite, using their utility, for reinstall with the same results. To make a long story short things went downhill rapidly. I've been using Apple since 1994 and this is the most disturbing and bizarre thing that has ever happened to me. All of my external Firewire disks were locked! The <Get Info> dialog shows every user access status as "custom". I am listed but I cannot change the access to <read and write> or anything else. I can't change any of the other users status, including Admin or System, delete or add users, or make any changes at all after unlocking using my valid password. First I did an Archive and Install and now a Erase and Install. The disk status remains the same. These drives have never given me any problem whatsoever. I hoped a reinstall might fix the problem. Apparently when the system went down it locked these drives. Why or how, don't have a clue.
One is an Archive and one is my Backup. I desperately need the data on these drives. I desperately need to unlock these drives. Is there any way to simply unlock the drives?
Someone please help...

I've got half a dozen OWC Mercury type drive cases. One thing I noticed after 10.5.4 is that some that I had made backup clones now had the "Ignore Ownership" flag set to on - something that I always check and which would prevent a proper backup or restore and wouldn't allow repair permissions.
So in some way, 10.5.4 did do "something" to those FW drives, but not sure how or why the ownership would be changed. And of course I had to unlock to turn Ignore Ownership off.
I wonder if Batchmod would help? Leopard Cache Cleaner -> Maintain has "Repair Home Folder" and "Home Folder ACL" which might get your boot drive and home folder working normal.

Re-setting Read&Write permissions on external drive?

I have a 40GB external drive on which I backed up my "Documents" on a Windows machine (now discarded). Now that I switched to a Mac (thank God) I would like to use the "old" external drive, but I only have "Read Only" permissions and no lock icon to unlock and reset the disk permissions.
Would greatly appreciate advice on making this disk writable again. Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
Veit

Select and right (control) click on the disk icon for the drive. From the contextual menu, select +Get Info+. At the bottom of the info window is +Sharing and Permissions+ where you can change permissions.
However, if the Windows drive is using NTFS, you will only be able to Read it. Mac OS X cannot Write to an NTFS-formatted drive. If this is your situation, you should copy off your valuable data on the drive and reformat it as +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+ using Disk Utility (Erase tab). Be sure to select the entire DRIVE in the sidebar, and not the volume indented below the drive.

Permissions on external drive

I have been using a Linux based NAS drive for storing media files and this has worked fine under Leopard and Snow Leopard. I have now upgrade to Lion and I can no longer access the folders on the NAS drive. Lion will connect to the drive but the Finder window shows folders with a red & white stop sign. Selecting one of the folders elicits a 'The folder “xxxxx” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents.' I can see the folders and files using the terminal. I have tried connecting the external NAS using SMB and bonjour but get the same result with Finder.
Can anyone provide an explanation as to what has happened during the upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion? Is there a way to reset the permissions so that I can access the files from Finder?
Oddly, iTunes can see the and play the files without a problem.

After MANY frustrating hours of trying everything to regain permission to my external hard drives I found an easy and fast solution. FYI- I'm on Snow Leopard 10.6.8, though I believe this solution will work for anyone on Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
1. Download BatChmod.app (http://www.lagentesoft.com/batchmod/index.html).
2. Click on the "File" button and choose the external drive in question.
3. Under Owner, choose "root" and check all 3 boxes (R, W and X). Under Group, choose "admin" and again check all 3 boxes. Under Everyone, again check all 3 boxes. **make sure you've checked the boxes and not just put a line in them...
4. In Options box, check "Change ownership and privileges," check "Clear ACLs (10.5+)" and check "Unlock." Do not check "Clear xattrs."
5. Finally, DO NOT check the box at the bottom that says "Apply to enclosed folders and files," because this is probably similar to what got you locked out of your own external hard drive in the first place!
6. Click on the "Apply" button.
7. Now open finder and open your external hard drive!

How do I make changes to an external drive connected to my Mac mini from my Windows 7 PC

I have an external drive which I learned had to be FAT32 for the read write option to be set in the Mac Mini. I did that and moved all the media files back on the external HDD. On the Mac Mini, I shared the 4 folders I needed (Ebooks, Movies, TV Shows, and Transfer). Also on the Mac, I added a user account "Ephraim" because that is the login I have for the WIN7. No Passwords are used right now. The current login being used on the mac is "Media". With the change to FAT32 I have set the permissions on the MAC to Read/ Write for Everybody. Everything listed shows read/write. From the WIN 7 "Ephraim" login, I mapped drives for every folder on Mac external. So, "TV Shows" is drive letter Z:. I can access all the folders/drives to view the files but, still get an error when attempting to change a name or move a file. "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the Computer's administrator to make changes to this file". On the Mac and the PC, the user accounts "Media" and "Ephraim" are set to administrator. SMB and AFP are selected under options. Under Get info, permissions show read write. I created a media login on the PC but could not see the mac mini at all. FYI the Mac mini is connected via ethernet.

In addition, I just realized I can make changes to sub folder names and move sub folders in to other sub folders. For Example: I have "Dexter" folder and Sub folders named "Season 1" and "Season 2". I move "Dexter Season 3" into "Dexter" folder, and I change the name to "Season 3". That can be done but I still cannot move a video file from an existing folder or change video file name itself. For example: I cant move a movie file from a sub folder to Gen Pop of the Movie folder, or change the name to my format. I want all files under movies with no other folders present, and I want the name to follow a format (Name Year Ex: "Flight 2012"). I have the mac mini in the living room and need to be able to make changes or additions from my desk, so as to not disturb people who are watching Cable TV by changing the input to work on the Mac files.

Changing permissions on external HD

I've got an external drive (Simpletech something or other) that I've been using since my Windows days and I'm having issues with it on Arch.
Namely, I can't write to it as a user. I can't chmod it, I can't chown it, opening the dialog box in PCManFM and checking the "write" boxes under permissions, nothing makes a difference. Take a look at this output:
[crew@myhost ~]$ ls -l /media/"Awesome Stuff"
total 32
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 0 2006-12-06 13:39 Diskeeper
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 12288 2007-11-28 01:10 Media
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 2008-03-28 17:07 RECYCLER
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 2008-03-28 16:56 System Volume Information
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1826 2008-03-06 23:50 conkyrc
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2222 2008-03-05 16:55 conkyrc~
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 2009-03-13 11:19 crew2
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 0 2008-10-25 03:20 found.000
[crew@myhost ~]$ sudo chmod 755 /media/"Awesome Stuff"
[crew@myhost ~]$ ls -l /media/"Awesome Stuff"
total 32
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 0 2006-12-06 13:39 Diskeeper
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 12288 2007-11-28 01:10 Media
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 2008-03-28 17:07 RECYCLER
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 2008-03-28 16:56 System Volume Information
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1826 2008-03-06 23:50 conkyrc
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2222 2008-03-05 16:55 conkyrc~
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 2009-03-13 11:19 crew2
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 0 2008-10-25 03:20 found.000
[crew@myhost ~]$
The permissions literally don't change. What the heck can I do here?

Your hdd's pro'lly using the FAT32 filesystem, which doesn't support linux permissions. But a linux box can't work without permissions, so when the hdd is mounted, virtual permissions are set: All files are owned by the user who mounted the hard drive, and if I'm not mistaken the modes for all files are 644. That's why you can't write files or create new files - you can't change the virtual permissions. A workarround (which I adopted) is to add an entry in /etc/fstab about your hdd and mount it as your user on every reboot.

Repairing Permissions of external drive

Hello,
I need to repair the external drive, although it is mounted , yet the "repair" is dimmed ( disk utility)
how may I fix this?

It has backups of OSX (unless you specifically exclude System Files), but they're not usable there.
So the volume is not recognized as an OSX volume. And, they all carry special "deny everybody everything" ACLs anyway.
In any event, the problem here is not permissions; apparently the user is getting the "The backup volume is read only" message, which most likely means the directory structure is corrupted, per #C6 in Troubleshooting, and needs a +*Repair Disk.+*

Locked external Drives

Hello! I am using thunar (with thunar-volman, thunar-archive-plugin) on pekwm. When I set everything up, everything worked just fine. However, after a few reboots when i log in, and open thunar, my external drives are shown, but everything in them has little lock symbols. What does that mean? And how do I fix it? If it helps, the external drive in question is an fat32 drive.
*I don't have ntfs-3g installed, because everything worked without it for a while. Before I install it, is it really necessary, since I was using the drive w/o it?

Okay, I see something different. here is what it gave me for the drive:
dr-x------ 1 takemori root 4096 Mar 25 07:28 Games
dr-x------ 1 takemori root 12288 Feb 4 13:03 Discs
dr-x------ 1 takemori root 8192 Apr 29 07:58 Drivers, installer
-r-------- 1 takemori root 138122232 May 22 03:04 f5351591.avi
dr-x------ 1 takemori root 4096 Mar 20 08:51 MOVIES
dr-x------ 1 takemori root 4096 May 23 14:53 Pictures
dr-x------ 1 takemori root 4096 Oct 29 2009 Zips
And then I did the same for my home folder
drwx------ 5 takemori takemori 4096 May 24 16:42 Downloads
drwx------ 3 takemori takemori 4096 May 24 12:28 Pictures
The first one says Username Root. The 2nd is Username username
Could this be why I can access the drive, but not write to it?

Can't change permissions to external hard drive

Okay...so far switching to a mac from a PC has been extremely painful. I currently have an external harddrive that I only have read access to. When I go to File>Get Info I cannot change this to Write access. How can this be so hard.

Check the disk's format in the Get Info window; if this is listed as Windows NT Filesystem, you cannot write to it from Mac OS X. In this case, you will need to copy everything that you want to keep off of it and then use the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to erase the drive.
(18127)

Trouble with permissions with external drive

I have a seagate external that I put all of my photography on. I have always been able to resize my pictures using photoshop and then go to the jpeg folder and rotate all of the images to be correct for viewing. After installing Lion this is not happening... I am told that I do not have permission so do this. Why? and how do I authorize this again so that I dont have to drag all of these images to my hard drive rotate them and then bring them back to the external.... after doing huge even wedding I am already tired and I know that there has to be a better way.. I am loving Lion as I figure it out but this is a deal breaker and i know that the problem is on my side and I know it can be fixed but I am to to new to Mac to figure this out on my own... of you have any ideas please help me... Thank you!!!

You can check your permissions on the external HD by right clicking on the external HD/Get Info. Under Sharing & Permissions, your user name should say Read & Write. If it does not, click on the lock, enter your password and change to Read & Write.

Itunes ignoring Read & Write permissions on external drive?

Hi,
similar but different to other reported problems:
1. I got in a mess with my library and copied a load of folders from a backup into my itunes folder, which is on an external firewire drive, which was previously fine.
2. Now I can't change info in any tunes and can't import anything.
3. I have selected the drive and subfolders, changing the permissions to Read & write for me, staff, everyone. I have said 'Apply to enclosed items' each time. Whether the drive has 'Ignore ownership' ticked or not makes no difference I think.
4. Itunes still won't let me change or import.
What to do?
thanks in advance...
Ben
Message was edited by: bennnn - added note about Ignore ownership

A bit of a long shot, but I wonder if the iTunes library file might be corrupt. You might as a test try dragging the iTunes library file to the desktop and relaunching iTunes, which will get it to create a new, blank library file. Then import a CD and see if it's successful. If so, then you know that the old library file is indeed corrupt. If no improvement, just put the old library file back, replacing the newly-created one.

Changing permissions locked external drives

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