[kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

My old netbook died recently (if a guy in a shady computer store in Edinburgh tells you that "this adapter will surely work" -- what ever you do, don't believe him). Got a new netbook, and an external usb hd case for the old hard drive in the hope of salvaging it.
The old hd seems to have survived, as it mounts just fine and all my old partitions show up (home folder, root, swap...). However, I cannot change the permissions of the files using thunar as root, nor can I copy them to my internal hd --probably because the drive is mounted as read-only. The /home partition, which is the one I'm interested in copying things from, is formated in ext4.
I'm guessing I should change something in my fstab, though I'm not sure what exactly. What's weird though is that the drive does not show up when I run sudo fdisk -l, nor does it show in gparted (which is run as root, of course) -- meaning I don't know what rule I should put in my fstab file, as I dont know what mount point to apply it to. I use xfce on my current laptop, but seeing as the problem persists when I try on my partners ubuntu laptop I figure that the DE hasn't got much to do with it.
I guess I could open up the computer, put in the old hard drive and change some configs, install drivers etc. to make my new computer boot properly from it. Does seem like a drag though, so I figured I'd try asking here first. I suspect this is a fairly common problem, but my google-fu does not appear to be strong enough as I've failed to find a solution on my own.
Last edited by caligo (2010-07-19 20:09:01)

karol wrote:'mount: /dev/sdd2: cannot read superblock' is quite different from mounting read-only - I'd call it read ... NOT!
I hope you have some sort of backup.
Yes, "cannot read" is indeed a more disheartening message... When trying to copy the files through thunar, I can see them but not move or open them -- and trying to change the permissions results in an error message about the file system being "read-only".
itsbrad212 wrote:# fsck /dev/sdd2
results in
Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
The thing might indeed be dead...
I have backups of all the important things -- just wanted to save some recent random files and a bunch of wallpapers, but I think I'll survive the loss. Thanks for the help guys. Might try to format the whole thing, see if its just the data that's corrupted or of the harware is busted as well.

Similar Messages

External drives mount as read only

I am running OS X 10.6, on a MacPro. Something happened recently to make my external hard drives mount as read only. The only way I've found to be able to fix them is to run Disk Utility every time I start up my computer. Does anyone have an solution to this?
Also every time I run the Disk Utility, at the end of the repairs it says "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required." I do not know if this is related, but I haven't been able to find anything relevant in relation to my problem with the drives mounting as read only.
Message was edited by: HeatherK

You might give this a try:
Select the drive and Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom open the Ownership and Sharing section. Be sure the box labeled "Ignore permissions on this volume" is unchecked. If it is checked then click on the lock icon, authenticate, then uncheck that box. Close the window.
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and at the prompt enter or paste the following:
sudo chown root:admin
Put a space after "admin" then drag the drive's icon into the Terminal window. Press RETURN. You will be prompted to enter your admin password which will not be echoed.
See if this fixes the problem.

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)
Hope it helps.
Marc

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.

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,

All USB drives mount as read only for user

I have searched a bunch and thee results I find seem to be irrelevant to my situation. Most relate to a single USB media that is a problem and won't read or write.
On a new Arch install on a new computer (my third base system install). Running Gnome.
All USB mass storage devices mount as read only for the logged in user. Root has write permissions and I can mkdir no problem. It is not an issue with the USB drive itself as this occurs with multiple USB media (I've tested several SD cards on a reader and at least two drives, all the media works correctly on my existing installations)
I'm posting the contents of my /etc/group file in case there's an obvious error there I don't see, and my dmesg output upon plugging in the drive. User name is changed in the group file posted to "archie"
This is a single-user system.
/ect/group
root:x:0:root
bin:x:1:root,bin,daemon
daemon:x:2:root,bin,daemon
sys:x:3:root,bin
adm:x:4:root,daemon
tty:x:5:
disk:x:6:root
lp:x:7:daemon
mem:x:8:
kmem:x:9:
wheel:x:10:root,archie
ftp:x:11:
mail:x:12:
uucp:x:14:archie
log:x:19:root
utmp:x:20:
locate:x:21:
rfkill:x:24:
smmsp:x:25:
http:x:33:
games:x:50:
lock:x:54:
uuidd:x:68:
dbus:x:81:
network:x:90:
video:x:91:
audio:x:92:
optical:x:93:
floppy:x:94:
storage:x:95:
scanner:x:96:
power:x:98:
nobody:x:99:
users:x:100:archie
systemd-journal:x:190:
archie:x:1000:
avahi:x:84:
polkitd:x:102:
rtkit:x:133:
gdm:x:120:
brlapi:x:999:
kvm:x:78:
ntp:x:87:archie
dmesg output
[ 968.044188] usb 4-3: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
[ 968.170628] usb-storage 4-3:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 968.171435] scsi7 : usb-storage 4-3:1.0
[ 969.174450] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic USB SD Reader 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 969.175068] scsi 7:0:0:1: Direct-Access Generic USB MS Reader 1.03 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 969.939417] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 15572992 512-byte logical blocks: (7.97 GB/7.42 GiB)
[ 969.941028] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 969.941037] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[ 969.944664] sd 7:0:0:1: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 969.945509] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[ 969.945517] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 969.952682] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[ 969.952693] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 969.956396] sdb: sdb1
[ 969.965003] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[ 969.965011] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 969.965015] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
I'm sure I'm just missing something in user management, but I can't find what.
Last edited by hooya (2014-04-27 03:10:49)

I am also having the same problem. Root can read and write to automounted drives, but my user cannot. I've tried with a variety of drives, I am assuming they are being automounted by root instead of the logged-in user somehow. (I am running x directly, and am not using a display manager, if that has anything to do with it).
When I look at how it is mounted it is as follows:
/dev/sdc1 on /run/media/myuser/drivename type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)

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?

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.

My external hard drive change to read only

I have been backing up my vids, pics, etc on my Seagate HDD for the past 2 months with my Macbook Air. All of a suddenly my external HD changed permissions to read only. I understand that this has been a hot topic for some time but I have not found the solution in any of the threads. Under the "Get info" tab "Sharing & Permissions" section it only reads "you can only read" with no other info. No mention of the users (I am the admin and there are no other users setup) or any other info and I can't click or hit anything (other than my head against the wall!!!!) If I try the Desktop Utilities route my Macbook Air recognizes the eternal hard drive but all buttons such as "verify Disk" etc are greyed out... no idea what I should do. Tried logging out of my user account and back in, tried ejecting and reconnecting but everything has failed.
Anyone with any ideas?! please need any help I can get. Thanks!

Disd you ever get a resolution to your problem? I have exactly the same problem with my ADATA HD710 I use for Time Machine, it works fine for a while, then for no apparant reason I can no longer write to the disc. Even though my permission is still read/write, I am told I can only read and everything is greyed out in disk utility. Previously fixed problem by reformatting, and starting again, but have just lost ability to write again. Need help!
FYI appears to happen when disc not connected to MacBook for a while. Disc fomatted Mac Os extended.

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 stuck on Read Only

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.
If you want to be able to write to the disk, you should pull all your important information off of it and onto the Mac's hard drive (if possible). Then click the smiley (Finder) and go to *Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility* Locate the volume of the hard drive in question in the pane on the left, it will be the second hard drive, slightly below the hard drive. The Format: listed toward the bottom of the window will tell you whether or not the drive is NTFS. If it is, go to the erase tab and Set the Volume Format to either Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or MS-DOS File System.
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.

External Hard Drive says its Read Only and wont allow any changes

My IQ505a has an external USB drive attached which is an Western Digital 3200JS USB External Disc Drive and for some reason I am unable to make any changes to data on the drive because the system has apparently marked the whole drive as "Read Only".
I have set my account to that of an Administrator and belong to the Administrators Group with all of the usual permissions except that I am unable to unset the Read Only marking on this drive.
I have also attempted to logon and make these changes with the Administrator Account but to no avail.
This problem is only with the External Drive and not the onboard drive.
Any help would be most appreciated ith this frustrating problem.
mclwlg
NZ
Regards
mclwlg - NZ
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Search the Internet and found many others with external drives, Vista, and this issue.
Found this fix (fix?):
Go to computer, right click on the drive icon, Properties, Tools, Check now. Deselect both boxes and click OK.
... an HP employee expressing his own opinion.
Please post rather than send me a Message. It's good for the community and I might not be able to get back quickly. - Thank you.

How do i change hard drive access from read only to read and write.

I bought a used Macbook late 2008, core 2 duo, 2,4 ghz. The start up hard drive will let me install programs but I can not move data on to the hard drive. Permissions are set to "Read Only". How can I change it to "Read and Write"?

Create a new account as mentioned in this thread and then delete the original malfunctioning one. Or use an OS X installation disk to do a wipe and install of a new OS X.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21973362#21973362

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!!

HT201250 My external hard drive suddenly says "read-only" should I run a disk repair on it and what does that do?

Has any one used Disk Repair on an external hard drive? Does it erase everything?

Repair the Hard Drive
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Fix Permissions for a Locked Drive
Open Terminal in the Utilities folder. Paste the following at the prompt. Press RETURN after each. The first command will prompt for you to enter your admin password. It will not be echoed to the screen. After entering your password press RETURN again.
sudo chflags 0 /volumes/*
sudo chmod a+rx /volumes/*
killall finder
An alternative is to download BatChmod and use it to fix the permissions.

Hard Drive formatted to read-only

I was trying to install XP Pro via bootcamp, and didn't realize that the disc had been switched w/a non-SP2 copy. When it was done, it tried to start installing again, and then I realized what had happened, so I took it out and tried to put Vista on it. Vista doesn't see the drive during install (but can browse it somehow), so it asks for a 'device driver' and won't continue. I tried to use the Mac system install disc to erase the disc, but it's now NTFS read-only and Disk Utility can't do anything (I even tried running Disk Utility via target disk mode off of another laptop). What else can I do? I was thinking that there could be a cmd prompt of some sort to change permissions, but I haven't found anything searching. Thanks!

Thanks, but the drive was hosed so much that nothing could be accessed remotely nor via install CD to do that. I ended up using the XP disc again, going into the cmd, reformatting the entire C: drive, then accessing the system remotely via Target Disk mode where I could finally erase it to format it in Journaled. Once I erased it, I was then able to reinstall the Mac OS off of the install disc.

[kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

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