HELP !!! External hard drive MBA/PC read/write

HELP !!! I have justbought an MBA and want to be able to read/write to an external hard drive netween both the MBA and PC. Help! Do I need to partition the hard drive or is FAT (FAT 32 ?) format still the best method? Grateful for any advice

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
As you know, OS X hasn't got NTFS write support. If your external drive is formatted in NTFS, you can install a third-party application to be able to write in the external drive like Paragon NTFS.
However, in my opinion, that's not the best option. OS X supports two filesystems which are compatible with PCs: FAT32 and exFAT. FAT32 is a filesystem which is limited to files smaller than 4 GB, and exFAT is like FAT32 but without this restriction so, if you can, format the external drive with exFAT.
To do it, first you have to copy all the files you have on the external drive to a Mac or PC, because you will lose them from the external drive. Then, format the external drive on a PC. If you do it on a Mac, PCs won't recognize this external drive. exFAT is compatible with Windows XP SP3 or newer and Mac OS X 10.6.5 or newer

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External Hard Drives Mysteriously Losing Read/Write Privileges...

I am currently running 10.5.8 OSX and for some reason all of my external hard drives are mysteriously losing their Read/Write privileges on my Mac Pro. I have not altered anything within my account or settings to my knowledge. I continue to have to unmount the drive, connect it to my MacBook Pro, reset the privileges, then re-mount to the Mac Pro to get it to Read Write. What could be causing this?

HI,
Try repairing disk permissions...
Quit any open applications/programs. Launch Disk Utility. (Applications/Utilities) Select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, select the FirstAid tab. Click: Repair Disk Permissions. When it's finished from the Menu Bar, Quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac. If you see a long list of "messages" in the permissions window, it's ok. That can be ignored. As long as you see, "Permissions Repair Complete" when it's finished... you're done. Quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac.
Carolyn

I have a FAT 32 External Hard Drive marked as Read Only that is unchangeable by an administrator or root user, how can I make it read/Write

Hello, All,
I have a FAT 32 External Hard Drive marked as Read Only that is unchangeable by an administrator or root user, how can I make it read/Write without reformatting it ?

Hi Kappy,
Just wondering if you had any advice for my situation . . .
My time machine backup was backing up to a drive that was "Mac OS X Enteded Journaled, Case Sensitive." I had no idea what this meant, or that it would even cause issues.
I took my computer to the Apple store yesterday, and they wiped it clean. When they tried to restore it from the Time Machine backup drive, it would not work. Their guess is that Time Machine cannot restore from a drive that is "case sensitive."
Any thoughts on how I can convert my time machine backup data from a "case sensitive" state, to a "non-case sensitive" state? I've tried to just drag and drop the files from the case sensitive formatted drive to a new drive that I have that is formatted non case sensitive, but I get the following error message:
"The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup"
I just really want my data back - I thought TimeMachine was the way to go (and was supposed to work) but unfortunately it is not.
Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,

External hard drive suddenly become read only

For those who have been using an external hard drive on OS X (using NTFS file system) without any problem and suddenly one day the system has started mounting it as a read only file system, this is because the file system right now has some inconsistences.
As it happened last night to me i started googling for a quick solution to solve the problem. But i didnt find anything out there. At least at first glance. So then i checked the system logs of the system in order to get some sort of specific information about why that was happening (in OS you have an application that makes so easy to have a look through the system logs and its in /applications/utilities/console.app). In my case, and i repeat, IN MY CASE, the problem was the following:
21/07/11 18:59:02 kernel NTFS-fs warning (device /dev/disk1s1, pid 2140): ntfs_system_inodes_get(): $MFTMirr does not match $MFT. Will not be able to remount read-write. Run ntfsfix and/or chkdsk.
So afterwards once known the problem, was as easy as to mount the external HD in windows and execute the command chkdsk /f (google about the usage of the tool if dont know how it works).
Alternatively, you have the Linux option using the ntfsfix command, but you will need to install the program before that (if dont have it previously in your system) or otherwise you won't be able to use it (sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs)
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I got an error message that my External Hard Drive was now 'read only'. Having scoured the various forums looking for clues as to why it had happened I found numerous suggestions, all of which seemed overly complicated and beyond my basic understanding (I'm old enough to remember when Macs 'just worked').
Anyway, among the suggestions on how to correct this I found what seemed like an overly simplified one - 'Don't switch on your external hard drive until after you've booted up'. Since I tend to leave mine on all the time, I immediately turned it off and back on again and ran Time Machine in hope rather than expectation. Would you believe it? It backed up as normal first time. Hope it works for anyone else having the same problem.

External hard drive to be read and write for MAC & PC

All,
I recently bought a Mac Book Pro and have always used a PC until now, which i used an external hard drive to use to copy files to. My mac does not let me write to this hard drive.
What do i have to do to be able to read and write to this hard drive on my MAC & PC?

your drive is formatted NTFS. OS X can only read but not write to NTFS drives. you can reformat it FAT which is writable from both OS X and windows. (this will wipe the drive of course). However, FAT is an inferior format with a number of limitations. another option is to install macfuse and NTFS-3g on your mac
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/
It will let you write to NTFS formatted drives.

External Hard drive is suddenly Read only. Help!

I reformatted my I mac due to it being extremely slow. After reformat, the toshiba external hard drive that I have been using for months before with no problem, is now a read only. I have over 1TB of space available and I need to use it. Does anyone know what happened and how to fix it. I cant lose my information.

In the Finder, press the key combination shift-command-C, or select
Go ▹ Computer
from the menu bar. A window will open showing all mounted volumes. Select the one in question and open the Info window. What is shown as the Format in the General section?

External Hard Drive showing as Read Only

I have an external hard drive I've been using on Windows XP for the longest time. I never set any permission settings on it, and I even made it a freely shared network drive on XP. Any other Windows computer I plug the drive into, I can freely read and write. I can't write to it in Mac. I used to not even be able to view the drive at all under Tiger, but now in Leopard I can read but I can't write.
How can I change the permissions? If I try it through Windows XP there's nothing to change since there's no permission settings on it, it's freely readable and writable to all.

Hi i have same problem but quite different.. if anybody knows the resoultion please help me out.. i have 250 gb external harddisk drive was using for my perosnal in my mac book and i use for windows also. suddently i don't what's wrong with my mac.. today morning i connect to my mac book it shows the external drive is read only file system. i cann't able to write the data on it.But if i connect to some other macbook it works perfectly.. i did check for other external harddisk drive and pen drive . only in my mac it shows read. only.. please help me out this issue..

External hard drive in "only read" permission

I have a macbook air and a sony external hard drive. Although my mac sees the hard drive i have permission to "only read". Why? How can I get it to work?

Hi i have same problem but quite different.. if anybody knows the resoultion please help me out.. i have 250 gb external harddisk drive was using for my perosnal in my mac book and i use for windows also. suddently i don't what's wrong with my mac.. today morning i connect to my mac book it shows the external drive is read only file system. i cann't able to write the data on it.But if i connect to some other macbook it works perfectly.. i did check for other external harddisk drive and pen drive . only in my mac it shows read. only.. please help me out this issue..

External hard drives appear as read only.....

Therefore, I can't change any of the info on them. I have two external hard rives mainly for music, and both of them are available only to read. How do I change the permission for that. They are both my external hard drives that I used with my PC. Thx for any help.

I have the same problem. I'm using a SimpleTech SimpleDrive Deluxe (via firewire), formatted by PC running Windows XP. I just checked "Get Info" and drive is indeed formatted with NTFS. So ... would this solution work:
Drag what's now on the external drive (backups from last 2 PCs -- I'm a recent switcher ...) onto my Mac desktop, reformat external drive in some non-Windows-proprietary format (specifics on how to do so obviously welcome!), drag my old backup files back onto the external drive, then be able to write happily to the drive from either Mac or PC?
Thanks!!

My external hard drive is in Read Only mode...

My external hard drive, which I have used before, is in "Read Only Mode."
I have put files on this drive and taken files off of it before, so it isn't an NTFS issue.
I am still able to write with a different Mac.
FYI, this is a Late-2011 Macbook Air.

You are about to format your storage device. Be sure to copy and take the back up before formatting. Just select the physical disc you want to reformat in the tree on the left-hand side of Disk Utility. You can select a new file system format from the drop down below, and also name the new volume to be created. Showing the info of the newly formatted drive, you can see the disc is now set to read and write.

External Hard drive won't read on iMac

I recently got a new pc and I was using an external hard drive to transfer the files that I wanted from my mac to my pc. I put all the files on that I needed and when I went to copy them to my pc, apparently I did something I shouldn't have? I need to format the drive to use it on my PC, but now when I reattach the Hard Drive to my mac, it is now unable to be read. I would just format it and erase everything but all of my brother's files are stored in it. Is there any way I can view these files on my mac again?

If the hard drive needs to be +read and write+ on both a Mac and Windows PC, it needs to be formatted as FAT32, aka +MS-DOS (FAT)+ in Disk Utility.
If the drive was formatted for Mac, you may have caused data corruption in some way when you connected it to the Windows PC. You said
apparently I did something I shouldn't have?
so it depends on what that "something" you did was.
When you connect it to the Mac now, the drive's volume does not show up in Finder, correct? But if you run Disk Utility, does the drive appear in the Disk Utility sidebar? If so, is there a volume indented under the drive (in the sidebar)? If so, can you select the volume (which may be grayed out) and click the Mount button to mount it? If so, the volume may become accessible through Finder.
If the drive appears, but there is no volume that you can mount, select the drive and go to the +First Aid+ tab. Click on the +Repair Disk+ button. Note if any errors are reported, and if there are errors, if Disk Utility was able to repair them.

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Hi guys and/or gals i need help with my external hard drive and i just wanted to know if there is anyway that i can have my macbook air read read my external hard drive. thanks.

Can you see it in Disk Utility?
If so, can you tell what format it is in?

HELP, external hard drive suddenly "not readable"

Hi everyone,
It appears that my external hard drive that held most of my film material is messed up. It's not being recognized by my mac and the drive was really hot when I touched it.
I have to try to figure this out as on this drive I have 100's of hours of edited material in this one film that I was almost finished with.
Does anyone know anything about this type of stuff, what might of happened and how I might be able to recover the drive?
I'm so lost right now.
It's a 250GB western digital.
when i reboot, the mac sees there is a new drive attached and asks if I want to format the new unformatted drive. To be exact it says:
The drive you inserted was not readable by this computer.
The it provides the following buttons: INITIALIZE - IGNORE - EJECT
Please, any help would be sooooo appreciated.
Jay

Open the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and try using the Repair Disk function on the drive; if it doesn't work, an utility such as TechTool Pro or DiskWarrior may be able to repair the drive. If you have AppleCare for that machine, you have or can get TechTool Deluxe, which can be used for this task.
(18251)

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I just moved an external hard drive that had been attached to a Vista PC over to my Mac. However, I can't edit anything on the disk from my Mac, because it's in Read Only mode. I'm sure Vista set some sort of security on it, but from Vista I gave every group possible Full Access to the disk. Is there any way to override Read Only mode from the Mac, or in the alternative, does anyone know how to override the security settings from Vista?

Indeed, if the disk was reformatted (possibly by the first person who used it) Vista is set to format to NTFS by default. In this case, you will not be able to write to the disk.
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MS-DOS formatting will allow the drive to be read and written to by both PC and Mac, but the Mac will not be able to read or write from this format as quickly as it can in disks that are it's own Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
*It's recommended, for performance and integrity, that you format the drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled).* This type of disk will be readable on a PC without third party software, but only with third party software. If you're going to capture or play video off of this drive, then don't even consider the MS-DOS format.
If you can't see the option for MS-DOS, make sure you're selecting the drive itself, it should be just above the drive you selected and should start with a number followed by GB and a manufacturer name.
Also, realize that FireWire is faster than USB 2.0, in case this drive has both, use FireWire and not USB 2.0 (for improved performance in either format).
By the way, welcome to the world of Mac, you will see it truly is a community.

New macbook air recognizes my external hard drive, but cannot read it

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Hi Beth!
1) You need to plug the phone in with your USB cable. If for some reason it doesn't sync automatically, try clicking on the name of your phone in your lefthand menu of iTunes, and it'll bring you to a homepage of sorts for your phone.
2) From there, you should be able to click on "sync" at the bottom right of the page. Or you may have to go to the individual parts of your phone (where it says "music," "apps," etc. at the top of the page), and enable those to sync on each individual page.
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If you've done this already, can you explain where you're seeing a red circle on your iPhone? Usually those red circles let you delete something if you click on them. For instance, if you want to delete an app, you hold your finger down on it for a moment and then the red circle appears so you can click again to delete.
Hope this helps you!

HELP !!! External hard drive MBA/PC read/write

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