My external harddrive has switched to read only

i have a western digital 1 tb hard drive which is formated to fat 32.
everything was going perfect on it until one day i was copying the whole drive to an older hard drive to create a back up when it came to my attention that my current external harddrive had become read only.
it made no sense.

Select the drive on your Desktop and then Get Info (command+i) In the window that opens, down at the bottom, are the permissions.
Click the small padlock icon and enter your admin password then change the Privilege to Read & Write, if you're asked to apply the same setting to sub-folder say yes. When that's done close the window.

Similar Messages

My external drive keeps setting to read only, why???

Periodically a 1TB external drive suddenly switches to read only and won't let me save edited documents to it any longer. It shows as read and write for my access but still won't accept written items. I'm curious as to why. It's getting a lot of files but still has significant space. Is this an address space issue? Has anyone else encountered this on their Mac?

The drive is malfunctioning.

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.

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.

[solved] External drive automatically mounted as read-only

Hi folks,
I have a strange issue with an external drive automatically mounted as read-only whenever I plug it to my laptop :
[sclarckone@archLaptop ~]$ mount
/dev/sdb1 on /run/media/sclarckone/dd type ntfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=100,fmask=0177,dmask=077,nls=utf8,errors=continue,mft_zone_multiplier=1,uhelper=udisks2)
And I can't remount it as read-write :
[sclarckone@archLaptop ~]$ sudo mount -o remount,rw /dev/sdb1
mount: cannot remount /dev/sdb1 read-write, is write-protected
But of course, I'm able to mount it as read-write on other operating systems.
I have udisks and udisks2 installed on my system. I also belong to the storage group so I thought I could mount a filesystem as a normal user but I can't :
[sclarckone@archLaptop ~]$ mount /dev/sdb1 dd/
mount: only root can do that
I don't know whether it is relevant to this problem, but I have systemd and polkit installed as well... Does anybody has an idea of where the problem could come from ?
Thanks for your help !
Last edited by sclarckone (2012-12-13 21:45:04)

Check out following file :
/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy
Look for mount a device and It should have configuration like :
<action id="org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount">
<description>Mount a device</description>
<description xml:lang="da">MontÃ©r en enhed</description>
<message>Authentication is required to mount the device</message>
<message xml:lang="da">Autorisering er pÃ¥krÃ¦vet for at montere et fil system</message>
<defaults>
<allow_any>no</allow_any>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>

USB drive spontaneously switches to read only

This has happened to me twice now. I have inserted a USB drive (formatted for FAT32) into Macbook. The USB drive has been fine for a while on both my Macbook and my Windows 7 computer. Then suddenly and spontaneously switched to read only while inserted into Macbook, without any action on my part. I have OS 10.8.5 installed on my Macbook Air. Anyone else have this problem?

Does your USB drive have a lock switch like SD cards? I have found that sometimes my SD cards will show the same behavior, it is because the lock switch got moved during insertion.
Also usally just ejecting and plugging in resolves the problem.
What is the brand and model of your flash drive?

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,

Hard Drive / Volume (DroboPro) has suddenly became read only!? I think its due to a permission issue and i cannot correct it

Bit concerned, my iMac seemed to crash yesterday... when i restarted the iMac .. i got the following message:
OS X can’t repair the disk “DroboPro.”
You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can
At the time the iMac crashed, i was downloading some files over the web... and at the same time importing a movie into iTunes. I believe it was iTunes that possibly crashed first... it seemed to be taking longer than normal to import a movie into iTunes, but left it running and went and ate dinner. when i returned, i couldn't wake the machine from the screen saver. it appeared to have locked up. I had no choice but to hard-reset the imac. when it rebooted, the external drive (drobopro) was in read only mode - i can read from it but can't write to it.
I have been initially trying to trouble shoot this as a DroboPro issue - but that drive seems fine. most of the reading i have done points to a permissions issue which is something in OS X that needs fixing.
I found these support articles on the drobo website
1) http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/det...d-only-and
2) http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/det...ld-i-do%3F
Per the first article, I tried using drobo dashboard app to shut down the drobopro, then restart my imac and then bring the drobopro back up again to clear the permissions issue. that didn't work. (I actually tried that twice)
When I go into disk utility on the imac, and click on the drobo disk... i cannot click on the repair permissions button, its greyed out. i can click on verify disk... when i readthe details that come up.. in red it says Invalid Node structure, The Volume DroboPro could not be verified completely, the File system check exit code is 8; Error: The disk needs to be repaired, click Repair disk.
i checked the tools in drobo dashboard and according to drobo dashboard the disk is healthy. its about 50% utilised; so definitely no space issues. i have 4 x 2TB disks in it and setup i a high redundancy mode so actual available space is about 5.4TB, and there is 2.62 TB available.
I then looked back at the first article again - and it says to get cocktail disk utility. i got that and went to PILOT tab as suggested, but the only option is to repair permissions on Mackintosh HD. so i went ahead and repaired the permissions on Mackintosh HD, but that hasn't fixed the issue either. The last options seems to be to do a super user move via the Apple Terminal, which i am a little apprehensive about doing - so i have avoided that.
Drobo support suggested i try DiskWarrier - i have downloaded that app and tried to repair permissions using that. again i can only run that on the imac disc, but that doesn't work either!?
I am stuck now, what shall i try? look forward to see if anyone can help.

Ok, so I have to apologise for that fact that a minute after making this post I managed to fix the problem...
Blew the dirt from the connector port. Really...? You ask...
This sure did fix my problem and after doing some more hard searching through the forums here looks like it fixed others too.
Dirt in the connector port meant the iPhone thought (for some reason) it was connected to a dock or such, thus removing the controls.
Anyway, cheers and hope this might help someone else.

I cant able to copy my files from my macbook to external hard disk,its showing "read-only",but i can able to transfer files in windows os,why cant i able to do tht in here?

i cant able to copy my files from my macbook to external hard disk,its showing "read-only",but i can able to transfer files in windows os,why cant i able to do tht in here?

to frederic1943
Its in NTFS Format...and i hav downloaded the file NTFS-3G,but still i dont know wht to do with that.will u pls help me here.

External OS X formatted drive keeps switching to Read Only

Since completing the upgrade to 10.7.2, my generic external eSATA drive case holding a Caviar Green drive decides randomly that it should be read only, despite having been formatted as OS X Journalled. Disk utiliy says that permissions have errors but I cannot repair them. It also says taht the drive is not journaled which it was set up to be.
Using Get Info shows system as Read & Write, wheel and everyone as Read Only. Unlocking with the admin id does not allow changes to be made to the Read Only settings and consequently my Carbon Copy Clone update fails every time as did the Super Duper method I was using previously.
The point of an extra backup is to keep it up to date, not to have to format the idiot thing every couple of days.
It happened again today and given the lack of any kind of solutions found with Google, I tried to add an authorized user. I clicked the plus sign and selected my own id. After accepting, the id was not added, nor was the Administrator group when I tried to add that. However for reasons I do not understand I was now able to change wheel and everyone to Read & Write. I was able to get CCC to do its update but I continue to have issues making the privilege correction stick.
Once I was able to filter out all the dreck about NTFS mounts, I discovered that A LOT of users were complaining about this happening and all the "helpful" advice was to reformat and start over. That's not particularly helpful as it does not fix the problem or prevent it from happening again.
I don't know if the workaround I discovered will work again and I suspect that since both Super Duper and CCC actually call the open source service called rsync, there may be a bug in rsync in OS X 10.7
Anyone know the root cause and the permanent fix?
Thanks!
Ross

More info. It's not RSYNC. My LaCIE USB3 drive that has worked flawlessly as a RW volume decided that it is Read-Only. My trick above does not work. What a pain in the butt this is, and no answers from Apple as to why this happens.

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.

[SOLVED]External HD: Auto-mount in read-only and only root can access

So I followed the advice in http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 88#p583088 regarding using udev to auto-mount my external 60gb harddrive, and it works. The only problem is, it is being mounted read-only and I can only view the contents via sudo or as the superuser.
Can anyone guide me in the right direction I need to go to get this changed? I have already once tried to recursively chown everything on the harddrive, but that didn't seem to work. The syntax I used from that above article specifies "rw" as one of the options for the mount command, so I am stumped as to why this happened.
Thanks
Last edited by trann (2009-11-13 16:24:36)

Wattanut wrote:
Have you installed ntfs-3g?
I think I've had that problem before.
WoW, perfect solution. This is why I love this distro.

External Drive Permissions Locked to Read ONLY - HELP!

Hello:
I have recently moved from a powerbook to an imac. The external I used with the powerbook was working fine until I began to use it with the imac. Once I hooked it up to the imac, I only had read permissions. I have never set any of the permissions on the disk and have always left it open. Thinking it was just the imac, I plugged it back into the pb, to find it was also appears locked to read only. I have gone through the web looking for solutions and I cannot seem to find a solution.
When I open get info about the disk, under sharing and permissions, its says "you can only read"
under the list of name: wkim has read and write privlige, staff and everyone get read only. I am wkim, so what gives? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

ok. my problems were probably not related and were fixed by reinstalling 10.5.2 with the Combo Updater found on (www.apple.com/downloads)...this probably won't help you but won't hurt so may be worth a try...
your permission problems probably have something to do with user IDs changing from one machine to the next. Try first to "repair permissions" with Disk Utility on your main HD. you can also go to Terminal and navigate to the problem directory and enter "ls -ln" to see what user ID and group ID own the files. then type just "id" to see what your local ID is. if they don't match then you'll probably need to change them with chown or chgrp.
hopefully someone else will chime in here as 10.5 has created convoluted permission problems and I still haven't worked out my own...

Time Capsule has suddenly gone "Read Only"

My Time Capsule has suddenly decided to stop backing up from my iMac, however the MacBook Pro still works fine with it. I get a message that it is now "Read only" - trying to reselect the drive has no effect.
Any ideas?

I've just had the same experience, suddenly discovering that my Time Machine volume on my external hard disk had become a read only volume.
I believe this discovery has something to do with the manner in which my external hard disk was recently shut down by my UPS backup master control mechanism. As a result of this inappropriate shut down, my Time Machine volume somehow became unmounted. That volume's icon remained on my desktop so the unmounting was a bit deceptive in that the volume appeared to remain mounted; that is, icon visible.
Not realizing this unmounting problem at first, I used Disk Utilities to discover whatever I might by repairing permissions and verifying that Time Machine volume. I didn't discover any untoward problems that way but I did notice from the Disk Utilities window that my Time Machine volume had somehow become unmounted.
Now the funny thing was that the Disk Utilities icon for mounting/unmounting a selected volume appeared to be stuck in the unmount option even though the wording showing at the bottom of the Disk Utilities window clearly showed that my volume was already unmounted. (Apparently Disk Utilities can become conflicted.)
So, I simply clicked on that unmount icon. My Time Machine volume then disappeared from my desk top as expected. Next, I clicked on the newly named mount icon and my Time Machine volume icon reappeared on my desktop as expected.
Then I used my Time Machine menu to prompt a back up now. Everything is now working fine once more.
If you're having sudden read only Time Machine volume issues, try the above approach. You might like it. (Let us know of your results, too.)

My external harddrive has switched to read only

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