External Hard Drive WD - suddenly "only read"

Hi guys,
My External Hard Drive, that does have enough free space and does work without problems on my PC, suddenly displays "only read" on the "show information" from File menu (btw, sorry for the expressions, my Mac is in spanish and I'm translating it in how I think it could be in english). So, I can't copy any new files on it. It happened from one day to another.
The other external hard drive I have does work well on the Mac.
I tried to follow the instructions from the Help menu, but didn't see any options for modifying the "permit" ("permisos" in spanish) from "only read" to "write and read" like I see on the other external memory.
Could somebody help me with this problem? Thanks a lot in advance!

Windows does not acknowledge the existence of Macs. A Mac formatted drive is not readable by a Windows machine.
I haven't tried this:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/ntfs3g.html
But it looks good...

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In disk utility I had a look. I cannot verify or set permission (greyed out). The data coming back from info. How can I change this??
Name : FUJITSU MHZ2320BH G1 Media
Type : Disk
Partition Map Scheme : Master Boot Record
Disk Identifier : disk2
Media Name : FUJITSU MHZ2320BH G1 Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : USB
USB Serial Number : 560A48A291F9
Device Tree : /PCI0/EHC1@1D,7/@3:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No
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Total Capacity : 298,1 GB (320.072.933.376 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 2
Partition Number : 0
Name : NieuwVolume
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk2s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/NieuwVolume
File System : Windows NT File System (NTFS)
Connection Bus : USB
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Universal Unique Identifier : C7B58C48-D6BC-4078-9DAE-CB125901A4D6
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Used : 171,0 GB (183.631.757.312 Bytes)
Number of Files : 85.578
Number of Folders : 0
Owners Enabled : No
Can Turn Owners Off : No
Can Be Formatted : No
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 2
Partition Number : 1

I have an external hard drive but it is read only on my macbook.

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Here's my lo-tech solution (if you have Parallels) to this frustrating problem:
Eject your hard drive.
Unplug (USB) your hard drive from the MAC .
Start Parallels.
When Windows has started, plug your drive back into the MAC.
You should get a little screen asking if you want the drive to be utilized by MAC or Windows. Select Windows.
Use Windows to copy your files over to the hard drive.
This is less than ideal and not a long-term solution, but I was afraid of attempting any reformatting since I have many files on my hard drive.
Just remember that Windows has to be running first, before you plug in your hard drive.

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To what password are you referring? Do you mean your user account's admin password? Or do you mean the master password for File Vault or do you mean a Firmware Password?
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If you cannot do the above then try this:
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2. At the prompt, type the following commands pressing return after each command line:
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This last method does not actually change a password. It simply removes the user accounts and lets you create an initial admin account as if the computer were new out of the box.
How to reset the OS X password without a startup CD:
Reboot into Single-user Mode. Enter the following and press RETURN after each command line
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I have a few External Hard drives (the two I care about the most are Seagate brand and fairly new). Both of them have been set up for Mac use only and never gave me any issues on my older Mac and were used frequently. I just recently got a new Mac. I hooked up my hard drives, denied the Time Machine pop-up, and copy my work onto my new computer. Though I was able to copy my work to my new computer, I couldn't move files on my external hard drive anymore nor could I add new files (back-up work) to the hard drive. Not sure if it's just the new computer or rejecting the time machine pop-up, but my external hard drives can no longer back up my work.
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machumpo wrote:
Not too thrilled that it is going to wipe the hard drive (and I prefer to avoid third party when possible), but I will give it a shot.
What you can do is use another external drive formatted to your requirements and copy the data from your current one to it. Then do the reformat. Also if you have the space on your MBP internal drive, copy the drive data to it, format the drive and recopy the data back to the reformatted drive.
Any chance you know how my external hard drives magically changed formats?
I cannot assist you there.
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Hi,
Google is your Friend
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External hard drive permissions frozen to "read only"

Hi
I have an external hard drive (windows formated) and I am using it on my imac but the permission won t change from read only
I need to copy files into it and I can't right now...
Thanks for your help if you have an idea!
Matt

I have an external hard drive (windows formated) and I am using it on my imac but the permission won t change from read only
If it's in the Windows NT filesystem, you need to install a driver such as this one or reformat the drive, which erases everything on it.
(45387)

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Hi Everyone -
Well, I'm a Mac greenhorn - so I'm still learning the ropes of this wonderful world of Macs - after living with PCs my whole life.
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Hello and Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Macs can only read NTFS drives at this time. You should reformat the drive to HFS+ ("Mac OS Extended" in Disk Utility) for sole use with a Mac; or to FAT32 ("MS-DOS" in Disk Utility) if you need to use it with a Windows laptop and iMac.
mrtotes

MacBook Pro crashed while deleting old backups off partitioned external hard drive. Now only recognizes windows formatted half of drive. Can the Apple side be saved?

MacBook Pro 15-inch, Mid 2010
Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB
Software OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)
I have an external hard drive:
2 TB Seagate Backup+Desk Media
Partitioned:
1TB - Windows NTFS
1TB - Mac (sorry I can't remember the formatting, whatever Mavricks asked me to use...)
What happened:
I was erasing 3 old backups from the Apple partition and my laptop crashed part way through emptying the trash. (it has done this many times before, where parts of the screen are frozen in square blocks displaced all over the screen. Screenshot not possible unless I use a separate camera).
When I force restarted my computer (holding down the power button) neither side of the drive was accessible. After running the Disk Utility and Verifying and Repairing the Disk Permissions and the Disk Itself (for the Windows side) I was able to access the Windows partition. However, upon attempting to do so with the Mac partition it tells me that it cannot be repaired. I have found many forums discussing SIMILAR situations but none with the same and here is why:
Up until this happening I could access ONLY the Windows partition when the drive was connected to either my Apple laptop in Bootcamp Windows 7 or my HP laptop in Vista, while my MacBook could access both sides of the drive. HOWEVER, after this crash, BOTH my Windows 7 and Vista can access both sides of the drive (so My files are still all there and accessible) but my MacBook Pro swears that the Apple partition is doomed.
Since the Apple side of my laptop is my primary workhorse I really want to figure out how to fix my drive.
So Questions:
1. Anything else I can provide to the experts out there to help me get this fixed?
2. Can I custom fix this via accessing the drive on either of the Windows systems?
3. Why would it suddenly show up in Windows when it became unaccessible to Mac?
Thanks All!

UPDATE:
It has been maybe a month since this happened.
After I made this post and was checking emails, walking away from computer, and then came back my Mac partition of the External Drive has shown up on the Desktop...
So, in the ever immortal way of asking the tech to come check the issue and the issue resolving itself, perhaps I should posted on the forum sooner...
NOTE: The disk still shows up as unusable in the Disk Utility and it appears that the files are read only (cannot make a new folder on this side of the external drive)
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The issue is not related to the external drive. iTunes Match has difficulties matching tracks ripped fom CDs because they may differ slightly from the versions on sale in iTunes. You can try the match again. Otherwise do a search of this forum. There are already many discussions on this subject here that may help you.

My newly transferred songs from my external hard drive to my ipod read as "Other" instead of "Audio" files

Okay, i need help bad.
Here's the issue. This is my 2nd iPod classic. My first one, which worked beautifully for several years, died. the drive went bad. A sales associate at the Apple Store said it just crapped out (she didn't use those exact words) and my options were to send it out for a new 80G to replace the bad one at $120, or buy a new one, which yielded only one size and one choice for the classic ipod, the 160G. So i sucked it up and bought the 160G. I wanted the extra storage space anyway.
Came home, hooked it up, and new ipod required a newer version of itunes to mount and manage mp3's. it's not iTunes 10, required for sync with iPhone, but newer than what i currently had at hook up, which was some version of 8 or 9. it's now version 9.2.1, to be exact. After installation was complete, iPod mounted and worked with new version of iTunes just fine. Just recently, I connected my external hard drive to my laptop to transfer music i had backed up from my old classic and iTunes. The transfer seemed to work fine, but now with my pod still connected, the newly transfered audio mp3 files are not in my library. The are stored as "Other" under the iPod Summary tab, NOT AUDIO. so i cannot listen to those 14,000 or so songs and albums i just transfered. This is completely frustrating. Can anyone help?? Thanks. How do i convert these to Audio Mp3 files instead of "other" so i can listen and manage in my library, and so they show in the artists menu?? I have "Manually manage songs" checked in the Summary tab. I think it's storing or acting as an external hard drive. Someone help, i'm really ****** off right now. I spent a lot of time d*cking around transferring songs i can't even listen to or make playlists from now. Thanks a lot!
< Edited By Host >

You maybe right, you transfer your 14k songs to your iPod under disk mode, so it don't appear as Audio.
To load your songs into Ipod Audio section, your must load them via iTunes, either Sync or Manually Manage your library, any other way, it just uses up space in the iPod Harddisk, and wont be on your iPod music menu.
So
1. Import your 14K songs into the iTunes library first. (read the iTunes help if you need instructions)
2. You can either Manually manage selected songs from the library or Sync all.
You can delete the songs in the Other section, by going into diskmode, use Finder and delete the 14K songs.
Good luck!

External Hard Drive WD - suddenly "only read"

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