My External Seagate Hard drive just changed to read only

my External Seagate Hard drive just changed to read only on its own?
I went to get info and scrolled down to the Sharing and Permissions
But there is nothing there but a greyed out : You can only read
There are No boxes to check or uncheck, No options to change to read and write, No name of owner or ignore ownership box. NOTHING ELSE IS THERE
HELP!
I have recently upgraded to Mountain Lion and am having other problems as well

Click on the external HDD icon COMMAND+I. You should see a display such as this:
You should be logged on as the administrator. Click on the lock icon. It should open and allow you to make the required changes.
Ciao.

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External hard drives suddenly changed to read only

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About a hundred times with no luck. Some of my research is leading to Western Digital, there may be a problem with the drives' 'smartware' software. I've been using this drive for months and I never used the 'smartware', but I tried it anyway with no luck. I just remembered that four days ago I had this drive plugged this drive into an Iomega wireless storage device and it seemed to work fine. Now the wireless storage device can't find the drive at all. I just need to know if there is a way I can change the permissions back to read/write, otherwise I will have to buy another drive and transfer all the data to the new drive and re-formatt the wd drive.

External Hard drive Permissions changed to "read only"

I use a Seagate Slim Drive (500GB) on my Macbook Pro (Late 2012, Retina, 13"), to store movies and tv shows and whatnot. Last night, I was watching a movie and everything was fine. I ejected the drive after use and it stayed that way overnight. This morning, I tried to connect it, but the partition refuses to mount. I got a friend to help me run command prompt diagnostics using terminal, which revealed that the permissions had suddenly changed to "read only". I really need to access the data on this drive because some of the movies in there are part of an important project that could hopefully land me job. Any help is welcome.

1. Select the external hard drives icon
2. Right-click > Get Info (cmd + i)
3. Expand the Sharing & Permission column
4. Click on the lock at the bottom right
* You will be prompted for an administrator name and password *
5. Once unlocked change the permission for user, group & everyone to read & write
6. Click the little gear right below and select “Apply to enclosed items…”

How do i get my external hard drive permissions changed from read only to read and write?

Does anyone know how to get an external drive to unlock the permissions from read only to read and write? Without reformatting or buying an app?

Hey P,
If you single click on your external drive icon on the desktop and then goto
'File > Get Info' a window will display the information for that drive. At the
bottom of the window their should be a check box that either allows you
to recognise users of not. You probably want to uncheck this box.
Or... You can keep the user option and just change the permissions
using the same Get Info window.
A.

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

I have an external hard drive but it is read only on my macbook. I have tried my friends which works on his macbook but this is also read only on mine. Do I need to change any settings?

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.

HT201250 Macbook air and 1TB external seagate hard drive

i just bought a 1tb seagate hard drive and set up time machine to my macbook air. so just to check i went back and opened iphoto from one of my backups and the iphoto library wouldnt open. does anyone know why and how do i access the pictures from my iphoto library on my exteranl hard drive.

I didn't think that this would happen, so I never bother backing it up to another drive. I regret it I don't want to format it, I don't want to lose what's inside it. I wish there were another way? Please, help me!!!
This is what I got from the disk utility -
Disk Description: WD Elements 1023 Media
Connection Bus: USB
Connection Type: External
Serial Number: 575873...
Total Capacity: 500.11 GB
Write Status: Read/Write
SMART Status: Not Supported
Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table
Mount: Point: Not Mounted
Format: Mac OS Extended

Since upgrading to Mavericks, I can't connect to my external Seagate hard drive. How to I fix this??????

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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

External hard drives randomly marked as read only

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.
Anyone know what the issue is here? I browsed these forums for a bit and it seems like the common solution is to unlock it or repair the disk. Both task I am very familiar with; however, I don't get the option. There is no lock icon for me to click to unlock and repair the disk (as well as all other options in the disk utilities) is greyed out for the external hard drives. If anyone knows whats going on here, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

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.
Ciao.

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)

MY Hard Drive says_"YOU CAN READ ONLY" for the OWNERSHIP AND PERMISSSIONS!

I cannot add anything to my EXTERNAL (SimpleDrivePS) hard drive. When I try to copy something to it, it says "The item cannot be moved because SimpleDrivePS cannot be modified."
Upon control-clicking this external hard drive's icon, under "Get info" it says "You can read only" for it's "Ownership and Permissions."
I have used this hard drive with Windows-based computers, but not with this new Apple yet.
What do I need to do so that I can move or copy things to this external hard drive?
Also, is there a discussion room for just general questions? - There are many little things that I wonder how to do from time to time as I am trying to become accustomed with Apple, like shortcut key for desktop, or where is control panel or link to "my computer" or other shortcut keys - things like that.

Hi newsppler;
Since I have never had a disk that was formatted NTFS, I am not absolutely sure exactly how you can discover how it is formatted. I think if you look at the disk with Disk Utility that should tell you.
Yes. If you reformat you will lose everything that is currently on that disk.
To reformat open Disk Utility and then select the disk. You then click the partition tab. This will allow you to select what format you wish to use. I would suggest Mac OS Extended +
Allan

External Seagate Hard Drive with Apple Ipad Air

I've just read that you can buy a Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable Hard Drive USB 3.0 (Model Number: STBF500300) which is powered from the USB cable, so there is no need for an external power supply. However, I already own a Seagate 500 gigabyte desktop external hard drive which I've had for about a year. Anyone know whether it would be compatible with the Ipad Air?

No, not directly. You would need to transfer your data from your iPad to your Mac and then back it up to an external drive.
Pete

Recent problems with a pair of external Seagate hard drives

I've recently started having some trouble with a pair of external hard drives. They're used exclusively for back up and I'm fairly certain all of their contents are available elsewhere, so I'm not terribly concerned about the data they contain. I would, however, appreciate some insight into what has happened, how it happened and/or what I might do to fix it.
The two hard drives were both formatted with a single ext4 partition. Within the last couple weeks, Arch Linux started to incorrectly detect them both as HPFS/NTFS/exFAT. Mounting them as I had been (with just -o rw), ownership/permissions do act as if the partition is ntfs. Using chown to change ownership would affect all directories but did not affect any files. If I use -o uid=myusername,umask=177,dmask=077 (which I'm pretty sure is all that's been necessary in the past to read and write ntfs partitions), I can then access files as well, but I still can not write anything new to disk.
After a bit of searching, I found a pair similar threads suggesting that fdisk/cfisk should be used to change the partition type back to 83. I used cfdisk to do so and both cfdisk and fdisk -l now show partition type as linux. Mounting with just -o rw and using chown does now change ownership of files as well, but it still does not allow me to write to the disk and ownership/permissions are not kept after unmounting/remounting. I'm not really sure where to go from here.
As to the potential source of the problem, the main point that comes to mind is that I booted into Windows 7 for the first time in at least a few months around that time. I don't generally leave these external hard drives connected except for when backing up, but it's possible that they were connected while booting Windows at one point. If they were connected, I definitely did not do anything that should have affected them, but I'm wondering if it's possible that Windows automatically did.

I highly doubt Windows itself would have done anything without your consent. For programs running in Windows, there's no telling, but if you don't have the security stuff turned off you should still have been prompted. Also, the fs type really shouldn't have any effect in Linux unless you're using a poorly written helper.
Anyway, give us something concrete to work with, s/a output of fdisk -l, lsblk -f, dumpe2fs -h, the relevant output of mount when the partitions are mounted, the permissions of the mountpoint when mounted, an example of the contents of the fs, etc.
Other thoughts: Have the partitions been fsck'd lately? Have you looked at your journal from around the time things started going sideways?

Can't boot from either of 2 external Seagate hard drives

Over a year ago, I purchased two external Seagate drives. One is FireWire 800/400. The other is an eSATA 500GB connected to an eSATA PCI card. I have not been able to boot from either one of them after placing a "bootable" copy of my "main" internal hard drive on each using SuperDuper! It isn't a SuperDuper! problem because I have another internal hard drive with two partitions. I have placed the same kind of bootable copy on each of the internal drive's partitions and they boot just fine. The external drives are the problem. After a lot of back and forth with Seagate, they concluded that my boot ROM is too early (too old) and does not support booting from their drives. Their lab has a newer dual PowerMac G5 and it does boot their drives. I was told that updating boot ROM was not possible. Both external drives function very well except for the fact that neither will boot. I just read elsewhere in this forum that boot ROMs _can be updated_. Is this true? Search on "Boot ROM" and include the quotes to see the references to updating boot ROM. Is this possible with my machine? See below for boot ROM version. Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.

Hi-
Blaming the boot ROM is a first. Haven't heard that one before.
Boot ROM can be updated, though it would have to be an update provided by Apple. There are no G5 updates beyond 5.1.8 (that my searches reveal, anyhow).
I think it is best to look elsewhere for the problem....
What are the Seagate series numbers? 7200.10?
What is the Seagate firmware version?
What is the make and model of the SATA PCI controller?
What is the chipset, make and model of the firewire drive housing?

My external Seagate hard drive won't show up on my iMac

I've had my Seagate external hard drive connected to my iMac for some time now and have been using it for Time Machine Backups.... Recently I noticed the drive would not show up in the finder and backup began to fail because it couldn't find the drive.

Hello Jwlane64,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
For more information on this, take a look at:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
AirPort Time Capsule: Time Machine backups may not mount; "Backup volume cannot be found" may appear
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1170
Best of luck,
Mario

My External Seagate Hard drive just changed to read only

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