Write access to External Drives

I am a brand new Apple user and am having some problems with my external drives. It seems I only have read access to the drives when I plug in to my MacBook Pro. I have set myself up as Admin and have allowed myself to administer my computer, but I'm not sure why I can't write to the disk. Is there somewhere I need to set up this as a preference or change permissions? Or is it a problem with the drive being formatted for Windows (NTFS)? I don't think this is the case since I can read files from the drive with no problems. When I go to Disk Utility the option to view permissions is greyed out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If it is NTFS then you will only be able to read from it. You can check the drive in "Disk Utility" (In the "Utilities" folder) and see what the format and partition scheme for the drive is. Use the "information" button at the top after you've selected the volume (not the drive, but the volume underneath it) to see the format information. A simple reformat to "Mac OS Extended" format should make the drive usable in OS X.
Message was edited by: Topher Kessler

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Hi Dansyacht, and a warm welcome to the forums!
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Unable to write in an external drive

Hi, everybody:
I am unable to write or work with the material I have in an external drive. I can see it, but nothing more. I see I have only permission for 'Read only' ('Solo puede leer', in Spanish), but I can't change it because there is no 'lock' to open there, or an evident way to do it. And I don't want to touch things in the System Preferences without knowing.
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Thank you, Barney-15E. I can't reformat the drive, because I have there a lot of valuable stuff. Stuff I need to work with.
Hey... I'm a little disappointed with this. How is it that this super computer (the iMac is really wonderful, I agree) can't work with a simple hard drive I can use everywhere else..?
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I created a test Windows service that does nothing more than open two StreamWriter objects -- one to write into E:\Logs\ULS and the other into C:\ProgramData\Logs. The former writes dummy text once per second, while the latter writes errors. So error messages
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I set up this test Windows Service and set it up to use my SharePoint app pool account, and this was written to the error log - the first line indicates the account being used.
[8/22/2014 12:01:25 PM] - Error writer is initialized and ready. Execution context svc_SPSvcApp_J
[8/22/2014 12:01:25 PM] - Directory E:\Logs\ULS does not exist.
[8/22/2014 12:01:25 PM] - Failed to set up the log writer. Access to the path 'E:\Logs\ULS' is denied.
System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'E:\Logs\ULS' is denied.
at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectory(String fullPath, String path, Object dirSecurityObj, Boolean checkHost)
at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectoryHelper(String path, Boolean checkHost)
at ServiceLogWriter.Service1.Compose()
I then tried this with my Farm account. For TEST purposes, I TEMPORARILY put this account in the local Administrators group (I removed it after the test). And
STILL does not see the E: drive or any folders it contains.
[8/22/2014 12:05:08 PM] - Error writer is initialized and ready. Execution context svc_SPFarm_J
[8/22/2014 12:05:08 PM] - Quick test to look for things we KNOW exist on the Server. We know there is an E: drive, and we know there's a folder named E:\Logs\ULS.
[8/22/2014 12:05:08 PM] - Windows reports E:\ does not exist. This is bad.
[8/22/2014 12:05:08 PM] - Windows reports E:\Logs does not exist. This is very bad.
[8/22/2014 12:05:08 PM] - Windows reports E:\Logs\ULS does not exist. In the words of the late Captain Phil Harris, "This is bad. This is bad bad."
[8/22/2014 12:05:08 PM] - Directory E:\Logs\ULS does not exist (we'll try to create it).
[8/22/2014 12:05:08 PM] - Failed to set up the log writer. Access to the path 'E:\Logs\ULS' is denied.
System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'E:\Logs\ULS' is denied.
at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectory(String fullPath, String path, Object dirSecurityObj, Boolean checkHost)
at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectoryHelper(String path, Boolean checkHost)
at ServiceLogWriter.Service1.Compose()
Next I tried my own ID to run the same service. I'm a Domain Admin so I should have ruler of the roost perms
[8/22/2014 12:12:35 PM] - Error writer is initialized and ready. Execution context sawyemat
[8/22/2014 12:12:35 PM] - Quick test to look for things we KNOW exist on the Server. We know there is an E: drive, and we know there's a folder named E:\Logs\ULS.
[8/22/2014 12:12:35 PM] - Windows reports E:\ does not exist. This is bad.
[8/22/2014 12:12:35 PM] - Windows reports E:\Logs does not exist. This is very bad.
[8/22/2014 12:12:35 PM] - Windows reports E:\Logs\ULS does not exist. In the words of the late Captain Phil Harris, "This is bad. This is bad bad."
[8/22/2014 12:12:35 PM] - Directory E:\Logs\ULS does not exist (we'll try to create it).
[8/22/2014 12:12:35 PM] - Failed to set up the log writer. Access to the path 'E:\Logs\ULS' is denied.
System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'E:\Logs\ULS' is denied.
at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectory(String fullPath, String path, Object dirSecurityObj, Boolean checkHost)
at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectoryHelper(String path, Boolean checkHost)
at ServiceLogWriter.Service1.Compose()
Mind you I'm starting and stopping the service while logged in interactively -- I can CLEARLY SEE there's an E: drive and E:\Logs\ULS folder!
It is quite evident to me that there is a policy blocking Windows services from seeing the E:
drive.
Run this under the LocalSystem (SYSTEM) account, and all is well.
[8/22/2014 12:15:18 PM] - Error writer is initialized and ready. Execution context SYSTEM
[8/22/2014 12:15:18 PM] - Quick test to look for things we KNOW exist on the Server. We know there is an E: drive, and we know there's a folder named E:\Logs\ULS.
[8/22/2014 12:15:18 PM] - So far so good - Windows reports E:\ exists.
[8/22/2014 12:15:18 PM] - Windows reports E:\Logs exists.
[8/22/2014 12:15:18 PM] - Awesome - Windows reports E:\Logs\ULS exists.
[8/22/2014 12:15:18 PM] - Log writer is set up successfully.
[8/22/2014 12:15:25 PM] - Shutdown in progress.

Write access to External Drives

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