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OS X Lion – read/write permission problem GTech external drives
Just thought I would post this as an FYI. I recently got an iMac i7 with 32Gigs of Ram. It has 10.8.3 as the operating system. Here was my problem which in the end was easily solved. I have 4 external GTech Raid drives – all different sizes from 1TB to 4TB. When I tried to write a file to them – only one drive would allow it. The 4TB. The other drives said I could not plop a file on them. They appear on the desktop fine – the file existing on them are fine. But I could not write a simple Open Office text file to them. Looking in the Get Info on each of the drives they all had read/write and were identical to the 4TB (Mac OS extended by the way) Everything was identical except size and writing permissions.
I opened up “About this Mac” “More Info” “Report” and went to storage. Writable was “No” on all the drives I had a problem with. I went to “Disk Utility” and ran the “Verify” on each drive and it tells me the drives are ok. But guess what – this solved the problem. I was able to write to the drives. I then looked at the About this Mac info – it still said “No” on writing. I solved that by rebooting the machine and Voila! it says “Yes” on write.
Hope this helps you all. Thanks. -
17 Replies
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That’s very odd.
Did you try changing the drives to ignore permissions?
Best,
Jeff I. Greenberg
Author/Master Instructor/Speaker/Consulting
My contact info and more
New! Come see me speak @ NAB/Post Production World! -
One thing I forgot to mention. The drives were coming off the thunderbolt port via a thunderbolt to FireWire 800 converter. The drives were all chained together. The 4TB was not first or last.
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The Saga Continues…. Each morning as i come in to start my day the drives in question continue to exhibit this behavior. I have to go to Drive Utility and run “Verify” to re-set the write to yes. Anyone else having this problem and Im assuming its Mountian Lion and not Gtech but im now not entirely sure?
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The easiest way you can check everything is to bring your drives to another mac.
Did you check the Main Drive permission (as I suggested) on OSX – to bypass it entirely?
I have here (connect via Tbolt & USB 2/3) some 1/2 dozen drives – none of which exhibit this behavior.
You might consider installing mountain lion on a different HD and see if it still has this issue.
Best,
Jeff I. Greenberg
Author/Master Instructor/Speaker/Consulting
My contact info and more
New! Come see me speak @ NAB/Post Production World! -
Thank you for responding. Sorry I did not get to your suggestion before. I actually did bring the drive in question from my machine to another machine (Same new iMac – Same OS – Same thunderbolt to 800 adaptor) when I mounted the drive on this machine it had corrected the write to “Yes” and when I brought it back to my machine it continued to say “Yes” so Ill see what happens when I shut down which I do every night (note – it does not set the permission when I re-start only when I shutdown and re-boot)
As for your suggestion – im unclear on how you bypass the permissions on the main drive? And you are talking about the “Macintosh HD” when you say this? -
Click on the drive itself.
Choose Get info.
Unlock the drive.
Choose “Ignore Permissions on this Volume”
If the drives aren’t having a problem on a different mac, it’s likely a problem with your system itself.
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Got it. I see that and I think – but not certain – that it was already selected. Ill post further in future.
Here is an oddity though. I have 4 external drives connected – all GTech raided drives and one of the drives does not have that option? But its not the drive that changed the write capability? -
That option has to do with the format of the drives.
It’s present in HFS+; not there in NTFS, FAT32, exFat.
Are all the drives HFS+?
Best,
Jeff I. Greenberg
Author/Master Instructor/Speaker/Consulting
My contact info and more
New! Come see me speak @ NAB/Post Production World! -
Hi,
You have to check the permission of external drive with the help of Disk Utility.
Disk Utility has ‘verify’ option which helps you to check read/write operation. -
2 of the drives (of 4) are Journaled HFS + and 2 are just HFS+.
Yes checking the “verify” in Drive Utility solves the problem but it keeps coming back. But today all drives still have write permission as “yes” so I guess its a minor inconvenience if it comes back. Thanks all
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