external drive is read only how do I make it writable

[Alex Muir]

It could be how the drives were created, however to me, It sounds like a permissions problem.
If you select your drive and get info (cmd -I), at the bottom of the window you will see sharing and permissions (10.6.7) you may need to click the arrow to open the pane.
in that box you should see the users on the computer and their permissions. Read only, read and write.

you can click next to the user name and change the permissions.
-Alex

[Michael Bigda]

Hey Alex,
When I open that up and go to the sharing and permissions area it only shows “You can only read” No options. All I did was connect my three drives to the Mac. Two were via ubs and the other was firewire.

[Michael Bigda]

I mean usb

[Alex Muir]

Michael,
The method of connection should not matter.
Are you logged in with a user that has Admin privileges?

Also in that sharing and permissions part of the get info window, there is pad lock, on the bottom left of the pane, that should be able to be unlocked so that you can make changes.

Also see if you can enable the tickbox that says “ignore ownership on this volume”

What is the format of your drive? it will tell you in the get info box.

-Alex

[Michael Bigda]

I am the admin user. And there is nothing you speak of. It is a NTFS and I guess that means I need to format it to FAT32 right?

[Joel Hufford]

Hi Michael,

It sounds like your hard drive is formatted as an NTFS drive. Mac OSX cannot write to drives formatted as NTFS out of the box, so you’ll need to install some additional software in order to be able to read and write to the drive.

There are a couple of ways to go about this. Here is the the route I’ve gone on my Mac and it works fine, plus its free!

First, you’ll need to download and install MacFUSE
https://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

then download and install NTFS-3G
https://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html

The NTFS-3G link above is for an older version of the software, however, it is the only version I have found that is free and it does everything I need it to do.

The only option you’ll be asked about is whether or not you’d like to enable caching on the drive. I always configure the software to enable the UBLIO caching as it speeds up the read/write process on the drive. However, if the drive is unmounted improperly, such as unplugging it or you experience a power outage, it is possible to lose information when the caching feature is enabled. The safer route would be to disable caching.

Hope that helps!

joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com

[Jeff Greenberg]

You’ve already seen the right answer – that it’s likely an NTFS drive.

If you’re on Win7 and the Mac is 10.6.5 or later, you should reformat the drive as exFAT – it’ll let you read/write on both platforms AND have large file sizes.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Mitchell Pennell]

Worked a treat

NTFS-3G Updated link for free version, which is not available on the app store

https://sourceforge.net/projects/catacombae/files/NTFS-3G%20for%20Mac%20OS%20X/2010.10.2/ntfs-3g-2010.10.2-macosx.dmg/download

[Jared Linzmeier]

I attempted the steps listed and now I get this error when I connect the problematic external drives and I can neither READ NOR WRITE. Any tips?

NTFS-3G could not mount /dev/disk1s1
at /Volumes/FreeAgent Drive because the following problem occurred:

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libfuse.2.dylib
Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g
Reason: image not found

[Sara Rebecca]

I have a mac, and recently found out my hard drive does work with it. But it is stuck in read only. can someone give me a step by step response on how to fix it??? like with numbers, letters or bullet points? i can only “view info” as far as i can find. PLEASE HELP ME!!! =(