External drive is read only under mountain lion?

I have a firewire external drive which is used for Time Machine backups and my iPhoto + iTunes libraries.
Since installing Mountain Lion, the disc is now reported to be Read Only, meaning none of the three uses above work.
A quick google search shows that I am not the only one with this roblem.
Has anyone got any suggestions? Rebooting & remounting the drive both fail to help.
Looks like a ML bug....
Omar

I had the same problem. Right click on the drive and hit "Get Info". Under "Sharing and Permissions" make sure everone, especially "everyone" is labeled "read & write". I did this and it works now.
Spencer

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TS1550 OSX Upgrade (Mountain Lion) turned external drive to "read-only" and now I can not do back-ups on time machine. How do I fix this?

I recently upgraded to mountain lion, latest version OS and now my external drives are read-only. They are formatted Mac OS Extended and I have been using one of them for Time Machine. How do I fix?
Thanks

http://pondini.org/TM/C6.html

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These discussions show that the same video-playback problems started with Lion even on 2011 i7 27" iMac and continues to ML:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16160679#16160679
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3204054?start=0&tstart=0
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HT1578 Why is my encrypted disk image now only read only in Mountain Lion? It was fine read/write in Lion.

Why is my encrypted disk image now only read only in Mountain Lion? It was fine read/write in Lion.
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Thanks! I haven't posted many questions (i guess that's a good thing).
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External drive now Read Only? Can't change after Lion installed.

I have several extenal drives attached. One has two partitions. One of the partitions is used as a SuperDuper Backup drive. SuperDuper couldln't find it now that I upgraded to Lion. I found that all my drives were changed to "Read Only" after the Lion update. I changed them back to "Read/Write" without a problem expect for the SD partition. It doesn't let me change from Read Only. Any ideas on correcting this? Thanks.

Select that partition. Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom see if there is a checkbox labeled, "Ignore permissions on this volume." If the box is checked then first uncheck the box. Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. Enter the following at the prompt:
sudo chown root:admin
Place a space after "admin" then drag the Desktop icon of the partition into the Terminal window. Press RETURN. Enter your admin password when prompted (it will not be echoed) and press RETURN again.

External USB drives will not mount under Mountain Lion

Since upgrading to Mountain Lion, two external USB2 drives that I have will not mount and cannot be viewed in the Finder. The same occurs on a 2012 MacBook Air, a 2009 iMac 27 and a 2010 MacMini, all running OS X Mountain Lion version 10.8.2.
Both drives are Samsung Story external USB drives (one is 1.5 GB and the other is 2 GB) and both have been formatted using Mac Disk Utility with a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, one using Snow Leopard and the other with Lion.
Both still mount correctly on a friends MacBook Pro that is still running Snow Leopard, and I had no problem with the same drives under Lion. Interestingly both can also be connected to Time Capsule USB port and show up correctly.
Both drives mount correctly under Windows 7 on BootCamp partitions that I have on both the 2012 MacBook Air, a 2009 iMac 27. These BootCamp partitions have Paragon HFS+ installed so I can read Mac formated drives.
Both drives show up in Disk Utility, but when attempt to mount the drives I get the message "The disk could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and retry mounting." I can run Repair in First Aid on the disk and get the message that the volume appears OK, but again have the same problem when I attempt to mount the disk.
I have also tried using Disk Utility 3,2, but still cannot mount the drives, though the program indicates there is no problem with the drives.
I have other portable USB including a Samsung portable USB2 drive, and two external USB3 drives, and I don't have problems with them.
There is clearly a problem with Mountain Lion with accessing (mounting) these Samsung Story USB drives, and the problem appears to be with Mountain Lion itself as the problem did not occur on the same Macs with Lion and does not occur with Bootcamp partitions on the machines.
I have a lot of time searching forums, but I have not found anyone with an identical problem.
I sure hope someone can help or that Apple come up with a fix for this issue which has only developed since the update to Mountain Lion.

bj10au wrote:
Since upgrading to Mountain Lion, two external USB2 drives that I have will not mount and cannot be viewed in the Finder. The same occurs on a 2012 MacBook Air, a 2009 iMac 27 and a 2010 MacMini, all running OS X Mountain Lion version 10.8.2.
Both drives are Samsung Story external USB drives (one is 1.5 GB and the other is 2 GB) and both have been formatted using Mac Disk Utility with a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, one using Snow Leopard and the other with Lion.
Both still mount correctly on a friends MacBook Pro that is still running Snow Leopard, and I had no problem with the same drives under Lion. Interestingly both can also be connected to Time Capsule USB port and show up correctly.
Both drives mount correctly under Windows 7 on BootCamp partitions that I have on both the 2012 MacBook Air, a 2009 iMac 27. These BootCamp partitions have Paragon HFS+ installed so I can read Mac formated drives.
Both drives show up in Disk Utility, but when attempt to mount the drives I get the message "The disk could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and retry mounting." I can run Repair in First Aid on the disk and get the message that the volume appears OK, but again have the same problem when I attempt to mount the disk.
I have also tried using Disk Utility 3,2, but still cannot mount the drives, though the program indicates there is no problem with the drives.
I have other portable USB including a Samsung portable USB2 drive, and two external USB3 drives, and I don't have problems with them.
There is clearly a problem with Mountain Lion with accessing (mounting) these Samsung Story USB drives, and the problem appears to be with Mountain Lion itself as the problem did not occur on the same Macs with Lion and does not occur with Bootcamp partitions on the machines.
I have a lot of time searching forums, but I have not found anyone with an identical problem.
I sure hope someone can help or that Apple come up with a fix for this issue which has only developed since the update to Mountain Lion.
You can start here
http://support.seagate.com/kbimg/flash/213059/213059_EN.HTML
Pete

External Drive is read-only

When I start up my external drive, which used to be my Time Machine drive (but hasn't been for 4 months) I get a message: "The disk "" was not repairable by the computer. It is being made available to you with limited functionality. You must back up your data and reformat the disk as soon as possible." Does this mean I have to get another external drive (I'm running low on cash - thanks, college!) back up all my files on this drive to the new one? I've tried DiskUtility, and this is what happens:
Invalid sibling link
The volume "" needs to be repaired.
*Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.*
Help, please!!

kibbles1053 wrote:
I've tried DiskUtility, and this is what happens:
Invalid sibling link
The volume "" needs to be repaired.
*Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.*
If you did a +*Verify DIsk,*+ do +*Repair Disk.+* There's a (small) chance it can fix it.
If that gets the same results, and you already have a heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app, such as +Disk Warrior+ (4.1.1 or later), it might be able to repair it.
If not, your only choice is to reformat the disk. This will, of course, erase it, so if you want to keep whatever's on it, you'll have to copy it elsewhere (if it can be copied), reformat, then copy back.
That may or may not work; if the disk itself is failing, there's nothing you can do to fix it.

External drive goes read only with error -50 after time

Running the special release of 10.8.2 for Mac Mini (2012) that was recently released. I have two external USB drives. The first contains my iTunes collection and the second is my time machine backup disk. The iTunes drive seems to go read only after it's been mounted awhile. I can read files off the drive, but I can't make any changes. I can't delete files nor edit them.
If I try to do anything with the disk including a repair permissions or disk on it, I get an error -50. The only way to get out of this state is to unmount the drive and remount it forcibly or reboot.
Anyone have ideas on what is going on or experienced a similar issue?

I did a little more research and there are quite a few people who've seen this error. I don't think it's the drive.
I suspect the controller in the enclosure, a jmicron 0x2336, is responsible for my problems. It looks like Linux and FreeBSD both had software updates to work around bugs in the controller. If OS X did not get updated, it would explain everything. The drive sleeps and then won't wake up fully and OS X marks it as in error and goes read only.
The enclosure is a Thermaltake Silver II USB + esata. It looks like a lot of people have had similar problems with them. I saw posts on macrumors, adobe's support forums, etc.

Copied files from external drive, now "read only" on Mac HDD

I recently moved a large amount of files from my old PC to my new Mac. I copied the files from WinXP to a USB hard drive, then connected the drive to my Mac. After I copied all the files to the Mac I noticed that the majority of them are set with permissions that say "You can only read this file". How do I take ownership of these files so I can delete/rename some of them?
Thanks!

Select your file and open the information panel. By owner and access, change the permission.

HT5172 my external drive shows read only

how do I change permissions to write to it???
not sure what the problem is here, I think it is a permissions problem !!! anyone have an idea what i should look at???
thanks
Ben

Click on it, choose Get Info from the File menu, and check the format.
If it's formatted as NTFS, reformat it as MS-DOS, exFAT, or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as desired.
If it's formatted as FAT32 or exFAT, use the Disk Utility's Repair Disk command on it; this may also happen for a flash drive which is about to fail.
If it's formatted as Mac OS Extended, click Authenticate and provide your administrator password, or change the permissions on that specific folder in its Get Info window.
(94931)

I am connecting an external USB HDD and I can see it on my Apple Macbook Air. BUT this drive is READ only. How can I write to it?

I am connecting an external USB HDD and I can see it on my Apple Macbook Air. BUT this drive is READ only. How can I write to it?

Drive Partition and Format
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. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) 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 Security 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.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

HT1549 How do I read write to an external drive? I am under admin account and cannot read write to any folder on the external drive.

I have a Mac Mini with Mavericks installed, as well as a PC running Windows 7. I want to be able to read write from both computers to an external drive on the Mac. I created 2 folders on the drive and named them Movies, and TV Shows. The content of those folders are the respective files. I set up both folders to be shared on the Mac under system preferences, and then mapped the drives on the PC. I also created a user account with admin privileges on the mac that matched my PC. I then copied a Music folder to the root drive instead of using external, and set up sharing as well. File Sharing is selected for all three folders, however the music folder is the only one which allows me to change the permissions to allow read write to everyone, or to create individual user accounts to connect with read write permissions. The options to add users or change permissions are simply grayed out for the two folders on the external drive, so not only can I not write from my PC, but I can’t even do it on the Mac with the administrative user logged in. The folder on the root drive is fine but I cannot make any changes to the external drive at all. Get info for any folder on drive shows read only. SMB and AFP are selected for all folders under options. I can access all three folders from PC, but can only add files to the Music folder. I cannot do anything from either computer to the folders on the external drive.

Try Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility - select the drive and run Repair Disk.

External hard drive becomes "read only" and won't let Time Machine back up

I have an external hard drive for back up, and it has been working fine until recently.
There is a version of 10.6.6 loaded on it also.
The back up will fail every few days. When I do some checking, the back up drive is "read only" but I am not able to switch it to read/write. I cannot repair it with Disk Utility as the repair buttons are grayed out.
I can run DiskWarrior and it will fix it, but it runs super slow and takes all the memory to do it. I can barely use my e mail while it's running.
Anyone know what's going on?

System log says:
3/27/11 8:01:19 AM com.apple.backupd-auto[1559] Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup - time machine destination not resolvable.
It's read only because:
A: I cannot do repairs under Disk Utility, the buttons are grayed out.
B: I right click and "Get Info" and if I click on the lock icon, nothing happens.
C: The disk is not listed in the Time Machine backups.
I will try to take better notes the next time it happens and give you the exact messages.
There is another drive daisy chained to this external drive which holds my music. The music drive does not have a Mac OS installed on it and is only for storage. It works properly.

My external hard drive is read only

Hey guys,
I'm just transferring stuff from a windows pc and i had all my music on my external hard drive. Well i set my default iTunes folder back to my external on my new mac but my hard drive is read only so it won't let me download anything after i buy it. How can i change it from read only?
Thanks

If the external drive is formatted NTFS, OSX can read but not write to it.
MacFUSE is supposed to add NTFS write support to OSX
<http://julipedia.blogspot.com/2007/03/ntfs-readwrite-support-for-mac-os-x.html> , but it may be safer to copy the data from the drive, the re-format it to Mac Extended (or FAT32 if you still want to use in on Windows). Re-formatting will erase the disk, so save the data first.

Error says my External backup hard drive is read only

I have a WD External drive that I use for my Time Machine backup. I turned on the computer today and it says it cannot backup because the drive is read only. It appears on the desktop and in the Finder window. When I open Time Machine preferences, it's identified as the backup disk. But when I choose "backup now", I get that message (it's read only).
Do I have to partition this again using Disk Utility or is there a simpler solution? Thank you,

See #C6 in [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).

External drive is read only under mountain lion?

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