Time machine suddenly now says "read only"

Nothing else has changed except that I ejected the disc for time machine, then used the USB port to connect my camera. Then I reconnected the disc for time machine.
I at one point think there was a box that said disc utility is unable to repair time machine backups (or someting along those lines) and I xed out of that.
I'm afraid to reformat the disc because it will mean putting at risk theonly backups that currently exist.

Thanks. I'm sure you're right about that. I just wanted to keep life simpler.
I'll go get another external drive and start a new backup set.
multiple redundant systems, just like the military!

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Time Machine appears to be "read only"

My Time Machine suddenly turned into a Read Only device.
"Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be 'read only.'"
"you may need to repair or reformat the disk using Disk Utility. If the disk can't be repaired, you must use a different disk for backups. Open the TIme Machine Preferences to select a different backup disk."
My computer Hard Drive is still running fine. Can I save a backup of the TIME MACHINE backups and load them into a new Time Machine drive.

Why not first repair the drive using Disk Utility?
Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. After DU loads select the TM 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 TM 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.
The problem of having a TM drive revert to read-only is not new. There is this past fix:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Time Machine Back Up issue - read only?

HI There,
All of a sudden the Time machine could not complete the backup. it says
Files can't be copied on to the backup disk because it appears to be read only.
Any clue why that says that now all of a sudden?
Thanks
Carol

That means your backups are corrupt.
Try Repairing them (not permissions), per #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
If Disk Utility can't repair them, or the +*Repair Disk+* button is grayed-out (meaning OSX has already decided it can't fix them), you're out of options. All you can do is delete the sparse bundle via the Finder, or erase the disk. Use +*Airport Utility.+* Select +*Base Station > Manual Set-Up+* from the Menubar, then Disks in the tool Bar, then Erase.

Time Machine Sparsebundle is suddently Read Only

I've got four macs at home all running 10.5.2. One is set up as a server, with a lot of USB drives on it as backup media. The other machines are all laptops, using Time Machine to back up to a drive on the server. All of the machines are working fine, except for my main work laptop.
This one has stopped backing up because it insists that the backup volume is now Read Only. The shared volume the sparsebundle is on is not locked. When I try to mount the image manually, it starts verifying itself an doesn't seem to stop. If I cancel the verification, it mounts. I tried using Disk Utility to check the integrity of the sparsebundle, but it fails and says it cannot repair it.
Anyone have any suggestions? Or has this backup corrupted itself to pieces?
Doc

Yup. Corrupted beyond recovery. I deleted it and started over.
Doc

Time Machine reported 'volume is read only' & rolled back to old state

I've been in love with Time Machine ever since Leopard arrived. This has all come crashing down over the last few days...
Firstly I got a new 1tb drive, so I mirrored my old TM drive (using SuperDuper), and all seemed to be fine – backups were chugging along for a week or so as normal on the new, bigger drive.
A few days ago I got a time machine error stating that "The backup volume is read only". I thought this was strange as the drive was working without issue for a week. I checked permissions, format, etc and all were set correctly. I restarted and Time Machine kicked back in and all seemed to work fine other the fact that there seemed to be no backups created for 6 hours before I got the error message. Then I made a scary realisation, somehow the files on my computer had been restored to a state from 6 hours prior, all the work I'd done for the morning was gone.
I put this down to a one off glitch (stupid, stupid, stupid). I've today got the same "backup volume is read only" message again, and this time around my files have been restored to a state from 3 days ago. Fortunately this time around Time Machine has a backup of the important stuff a few hours ago.
I am now very worried about using the same disk with Time Machine. I also have no idea if Time Machine is the culprit (but logic tells me with the rolling back of files it must be). What should I do? How can I figure out what is going on?

This may fix the "read only" problem:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Time Machine - External Hard Drive Read only error

Just recently got a Iomega 1TB MiniMax FireWire 800 USB 2.0 Desktop Hard Drive and used Time Machine to backup my computer. This was my first time using Time Machine and it successfully backed up 350 GBs. It continued to do backups every hour. When I turned my computer off and then turned it on the next day Time Machine wouldn't allow me to do a backup because it said the hard drive was read only. When I checked info it said it was read/write. I used disc utility to verify disc it said it could not verify disc do a disc repair. Disc repair failed and it said reformat disc. I erased the hard drive tried again and I got the same error message. The hard drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I searched this forum and the trouble shooting links and couldn't find anything on how to correct this. Any help on this problem would be appreciated.

See the following:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Time machine failure hard drive read only

Hi
I have a seagate 4tb hard drive backing up my 4tb of internal hard drives on my 2008 mac pro. It has worked perfectly for a couple of months.
A couple of weeks ago, for no reason whatsoever that I can discern, the time machine back up failed and the message is that it is read only and I should repair or erase the disk using disk utility. As the back up is over usb 2 only and takes about two days I dont want to do this particularly as I don't see how this will convert the disk back into a read and write disk.
The info on the disk, which I can't seem to change is
you can only read
system read and write
wheel (whatever that is) read and write
and everyone read only
I have tried just moving a file on to it but it is rejected as read only. I can't see any write protect button on the drive itself.
Could you please advise as to whether this is a known macos issue or is this a drive fault. It is strange that I can't seem to alter the permissions in get info.
Any help appreciated
thank you

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for details.

Crash Bang 15th day of 30 day trial, file now says "read only"?

so I've lost a lot of work and I don't understand. Files not found to open, and files panel says it's "read only". Doesn't convert to writable or will it change when I click the "turn off read-only" option.
Am I screwed now or what?

Tried that, no CD thing either, I just back up files, most were corrupted but I least I didn't lose everything.
Thanks

Time Machine Turns External Drive Read Only

Folks--
I went away on vacation in December 2010 and shut my mac osx 10.5.8 desktop computer off, and with it my lacie 1T external drive, partitioned into three volumes, one of which served as my Time Machine backup volume. When I returned from vacation in early January 2011, Time Machine said that the volume in question was no longer available. Somehow it had become "read only." When I tried to fix it using Disk Utility I was unable to even verify it. When I tried to copy the files from the volume to another drive so that I could reformat, I received error message 1426. I'm feeling a little stuck. It seems like the only option is to reformat the entire drive and lose all of the back ups (the other two volumes have older backups).
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

nicx wrote:
Is it really corrupted? I can still access all the data on the volume, I just can't copy it or get the volume out of the read-only status.
Yes. If OSX marked it "read-only," it's corrupted.
Time Machine backups are intricately linked together; anything corrupted means the whole set is suspect. You may be able to restore some things, you might even be able to do a full system restore from some backups; but somewhere, something is corrupted. OSX knows that, and won't let you resume backing-up to corrupted backups, or copy them (even if you could copy them, the copy would be corrupted, too).

WD External 14.5 GB left, used it before, now says READ ONLY!?!

Can't transfer files onto Western Digital external HD?
Anyone know how to fix?
Thanks!

Hi I'm A Mac
Normaly the only format the Mac can not write to is NTFS for windows!
Open Disk Utility and select the mounted drive to check the format?
For more info: "Sharing drives with windows"
Dennis

I was backing up my iPhone and importing photos onto iPhoto at the same time , then suddenly it says no more space available (i had 48GB before i do this and now i have 18GB) i can't find the back up or the photo anywhere , how can i delete them ?

i was backing up my iPhone and importing photos onto iPhoto at the same time , then suddenly it says no more space available (i had 48GB before i do this and now i have 18GB) i can't find the back up or the photo anywhere , how can i delete them ? i dont need the pictures or the back ups , i want to delete them but they are not there

Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown asBackups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Reboot and it should go away.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

IMac 7,1. Snow Leopard. 2 printers that printed nothing, or more than ±1/4 from page top. Reinstalled OS. Time Machine BU now allows only latest (faulty) files. ±4 series shown, each taking +8 hours to complete. How to reinstall from 'DEVICES' in 'iMac'?

iMac 7,1. SnowLeopard. 2 printers that printed nothing, or more than ±1/4 from page top.Reinstalled OS. Time Machine BU now allows only latest (faulty) files. ±4series shown, each taking +8 hours to complete. How to reinstall from ‘DEVICES’in ‘iMac’?

You need to get rid of MacKeeper (Zeobit). Do not use their uninstaller, follow the instructions here ...
http://applehelpwriter.com/2011/09/21/how-to-uninstall-mackeeper-malware/
When that is done there does not appear to be a lot wrong if you correct the red ink entries.
The 4Gb is sufficient for Yosemite though 6 or 8 Gb would be better. You may find the download slow so be prepared.

I recently took my imac in for a recall on the hard drive, they replaced my hard drive, i used time machine to restore all my files. Now when I turn time machine on it says back up failed not enough space, it is not overwriting old back ups.

I recently took my imac in for a recall on the hard drive, they replaced my hard drive, i used time machine to restore all my files. Now when I turn time machine on it says back up failed not enough space, it is not overwriting old back ups. Why? Please help

http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Time machine suddenly not working, advice pls

Hi,
I have two external HD's, one is mains powered and the other is a smaller and more portable USB powered one..
i used to use time machine on the more portable one, but then i changed to using the mains powered ext HD for time machine backing up, and never had a problem with either.
Now i am away from home and only took the portable one with me, and the first time i tried to back up using time machine with this one it fails always after backing up about 30gigs...it always seems to fail at the same point more or less... and the msg i got is below...
One thing to note, is that before attempting this back up, this portable ext HD did have a lot of content on it (mainly music), which is now not backed up on either of my ext HD's - i transferred it to my laptop + deleted it from the external HD before making the time machine backup. now i can't even simply copy and paste anything to the empty portable ext HD. I can remember having problems deleting from the portable ext HD and i think, i had a lot of problems specifically removing the backups folder that was on that portable HD from a long time ago, but i did remove it in the end.
So my suspicions are that this is probably the reason it doesnt work now - odd that i can't even put anything onto the portable HD now... I need to return this laptop to apple asap (due to other non-related reasons), so i need to erase its HD before sending and i cant access the bigger ext HD with my backups on,( to make a new back up) before i need to send it, (that's why I wanted to change this portable HD that's with me to be my time machine back up)as i have a recent back up at home I'd happily just put my new things on a storage device you see, as could use the back up again later when needed.
using time machine is essential for me for its simplicity of transferring everything to the new comp, (likely to be a mac mini when ive done enough research)...but as i say - because i have a fairly recent time machine back up at home, if i can simply transfer the latest additions to my laptop to this ext HD, whilst not ideal, will suffice as i don't have much time.
does anyone have any idea why this is failing? I really need to back up to this ext HD as i am a long way from my usual one and won't be able to access it for a while. Was I not able to change back up device more than once? hopefully its just a case that this portable external HD has just stopped working and a solution is to buy a new ext hD where i am here, but that may not work, and I don't want to fork out another £50 if it's unnecessary.
Apologies for the long-winded explanation...+ many many thanks in advance....

**** i spoke too soon....it stopped again around the 30 gbs transferred mark.
how strange....there must be something that's stopping it backing up, some content it doesn't like?
I tried again to also just move the files I dont have backed up anywhere (200gb) , onto the external hd but it doesnt even start the process, and I get this msg
"the finder cant complete the operation because some data in (the folder i want to transfer) cant be read or written. (Error code -36) "
does this mean there's a "backups.backupdb file in there somewhere it doesnt allow me to move? I got it all from the external hd to my computer at one point though...so would seem strange..
thx
(and its the same, regardless.....whatever file i try to transfer across, be it just an mp3 or a jpeg...i get the same msg and it doesnt let me)

New HD and time machine restore was interrupted. Only half of data transferred.

My HD has been replaced and when backing up from my time machine the transferred got interrupted. When Mac book booted only half the data. So I erased the hard drive to start again although I now can't restore from my time machine as its saying not enough space on HD to restore. Please help coz I'm freaking out!

Follow these instructions for reinstall 10.6, you will need to erase the ENTIRE drive by selecting the drive makers name and size on the left while booted from the 10.6 disk that came with your machine as this is the machine specific version with your free iLife included.
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
If you use the white 10.6 disk, (it's 10.6.3) then that doesn't have the free iLife, but if you later purchased it from AppStore it can be redownloaded when you get to 10.8 again.
(ideally that older machine should stick with 10.6.8, but you have your files already in 10.8 on the TM drive, so...)
Make sure you erase the entire drive with the Security Erase Zero All Data option, this will "pre-map" off any potentially failing sectors on the drive before they fail with your data on it, it makes your machine a lot more reliable.
Reducing bad sectors effect on hard drives
Once that's all done, log in and setup with your same user name as before (important) and Software Update to 10.6.8, log into AppStore and hold the option key down and click on Purchases, redownload 10.8 and install.
Revisit and redownload other software like iLife etc.
Use the TM drive to bring back copies of your files into their respective folders.
Reboot the Mac holding the command and r keys down, use Terminal and enter resetpassword, a window appears, select your boot volume and user, then reset ACL's, should fix your user permissions issue.
Note: What the AppleStore should have done is installed the 10.8 Recovery HD on your new drive, then you could have just reinstalled 10.8 from that.

Time machine suddenly now says "read only"

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