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.

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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.

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

Help, MBP Hard Drive is Read-Only, Can't access or unlock any user preferences

I could really use some help. I have searched and tried what I could but I am at a loss with what to do. I first noticed this last night when I was trying to switch users and after entering the correct password nothing would happen. I then went to Preferences to reset my password and the lock icon was closed so I clicked to unlock it and it prompted me for my password and after entering the correct one nothing happens. It simply reverts back to the same window without unlocking.
I am unable to switch users, unlock any locked preferences, install any software, etc as anything that requires my admin password won't work. I am entering the correct password because if the wrong one is entered it "shakes" and the correct one looks as if it will be accepted but it doesn't.
I have tried running repair in Disk Utility and rebooting multiple times to no avail. I finally decided to try and reinstall Lion however once I get to the page asking for admin allowance it again won't go past the password screen so I can't even do that.
After reading tons of threads I came across one that pointed to my Macintosh HD. I chose get info and it turns out that I am now Read Only. The only one with write access is System. Therefore I can't do anything.
I am completely at a loss and really need some help. Some threads I've come across mention running scripts in Terminal but I have no idea what is actually relevant for me and would really prefer some specific help. I was on 10.7.1 so I upgraded to 10.7.2 but the issue is still very much present.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Reboot and hold down the option key at the startup chime. Select Recovery HD. Launch Disk Utility. Try repairing permissions. You can also reinstall from there if you wish.
What have you been using to make backups? Time Machine or some other program?

NTFS External Hard Drive now read only

Hello Everyone,
For months I have been connecting a NTFS 1 TB Phantom Labs external hard drive to my mac book, to access my music collection, as well as store additional large files. Today, however, I found my external hard drive to be "read only," rather than read and write. Interestingly, the folder where I keep my music, also includes the lock image as the external hard drive icon.
When I look in Disk Utility, the Phantom Drive is originally listed as read/write. However, the mounting point, named disk2s1 is listed as read only.
Does anyone have any idea how to resolve this situation and return to the read/write status I originally enjoyed?
Thanks.

I have got the exact same problem!!
have a 320 seagate ext HD formatted as NTFS that I have been using for the last 3-4 months that suddenly became read only.
I'm running macfuse with 3G to read and write to the drive and prior to this have never had an issue.
Have another ext HD formatted as NTFS that reads and writes fine. I have tried disk utility but verify and first aid are greyed out for the seagate drive, One minute I was writing to my drive fine and next time I plugged it in Read only (yes I ejected properly as always)
Any ideas?? I hope it's not a re format and start again..

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 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

Backup drive now read-only after upgrafe to 10.5.2

Cannot change permissions (as root or as myself) on external drive. Any ideas? No problems before OS upgrade

In this forum
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=42725&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0
they tell that Dell released A101 in 9/10/2007
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&re leaseid=R166212&SystemID=XPS_M1330&servicetag=HXW2FD1&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=159 81&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=1&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=32&fileid=224 422
In the same forum in this post
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=42502
there is a link for a firmware called "GSA-S10N - Firmware AP12 (APPLE)" (I read that a MBP user had a laptop from Apple with that firmware) and direct download link is
http://forum.rpc1.org/dlfile.php?site=firmx&file=GSA-S10N_AP12Apple.zip
Who is brave to try an upgrade? :-D

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)

Hi all not sure where original request went but as a new apple user I have external hard drives that are now "read only" and I can't change or save documents. Went to Get Info and this did not help. Can anyone assist with solution, thanks.

I am a new user to apple and have external hard drives from previous computers. I have many documents I can no longer access and change as they say the drives are read only. How do I change the read only to read and write etc for these external drives. I tried Get Info but this did not assist. Thanks.

Hi,
Google is your Friend
10:18 PM Sunday; February 12, 2012
 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Lion 10.7.3)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Time Machine once worked, now external hard drive is "read only"

I have a 2005 iMac G5, running OS X 10.5. Had some power issues, and reinstalled (and archived) my OS a couple of time.
Recently purchased Western Digital 1TB external hard drive for back up. It worked once or twice, but now shows "read only" status.
Disk Utility won't do anything, because it's read only (can't repair, erase, partition or convert).
Hard drive works on PC running Windows 7, and newer Mac with Snow Leopard, just not the one computer I need it for. Any suggestions?

This may help:
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 visit the User Tips found at the top of this forum's Topics list: Time Machine User Tips.

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.

External Hard Drive Becomes Read Only

I have a LaCie Hard Drive that Time Machine has been backing up to for about 4 days now. All of a sudden, the external hard drive is read only. When I go into Get Info for the hard drive, I can't even change the read/write permissions - it's all grayed out. This is the second time it's happened. The first time was on a Western Digital MyBook. TM fried that drive. At least this drive hasn't disappeared like the last time.
I've now changed the Time Machine backup to my second hard drive on my Mac Pro (which is screaming along, as opposed to the FW800 [!!] backup on my La Cie, whose file transfers are slo-o-o-w).
The idea behind backing up onto the external was so that if I ever needed to leave during a fire or earthquake, I could bring this with me and not worry if my computer was destroyed. Insurance would replace the computer, and I could replace my system.
If it weren't formatted properly, it wouldn't have been backing up for the last few days.
Can anyone help?
Message was edited by: Theresa Mesa

Thank you to everyone who has posted about this issue -- it just happened to me AGAIN this morning (this is my 3rd time), after I installed the 10.5.2 update. The first two times were right after I hooked up my external Iomega 500GB drive to use with Time Machine and I thought it was something I was doing. Then it seemed to work fine for a couple months so I thought the problem was over. Guess not! It is frustrating because I just lost about 2 months worth of backups. So finally I searched Apple's discussion forums and saw that I am not alone. However, no one was really posting a solution other than to say "reformat the drive".
So I did a Google search about this topic and encountered the following article. I have just gone through the steps he outlines and although I won't know for awhile if it works, I figure at this point it can't hurt to try. I hope this proves useful to others as well. (One note -- in his article, he says to skip the Erase tab and go right to the Partition tab. If you don't see the Partition tab, first erase your corrupt Time Machine backup disk and then follow his steps.)
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple/leopard-disk-utility-format-issue-screws-with-t ime-machine-but-theres-an-easy-fix-316573.php
Cheers ~
Message was edited by: sneebish

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.

External drive now Read Only? Can't change after Lion installed.

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