external hard drives - ownership and permissions issue

Select the drive, then under File on the MenuBar, go to Get Info. Under
Ownership & Permissions, go to the bottom and select Details. There will be a padlock, next to the firs towner listed, system. Click it. The Group should be listed as admin, with read & write access. If not, click the double arrows, and change the group. You will be asked for your password.

Occasionally in the past, this did not always stick for me, and I would then login as root, do the above and all would be fine. As root, you'll have access to Others, which you can then change to No Access.

Follow the instructions in this FAQ.

(23567)

I have a similar problem. When ever I try to move something like my photos up to my external drive a message comes up saying "the item "photos" could not be moved because "Backup" cannot be modified" I found out that the only way it could be fixed is by logging on thought the root settings which I did but it did not fix my problem because I still cannot modify the external drives permissions to allow me to backup my files. I am school starts in about a month so I need this fixed soon. What do I do?

Right-click the external drive's Desktop icon, select Get Info, expand Ownership & Permissions, and then check the Ignore ownership on this volume box.

I tried that, I can read only. Does this mean that I have to get a new external drive or what?

Select the drive in the Finder and choose Get Info from the File menu; if the disk's format is listed as Windows NT Filesystem, you will either need to reformat the drive with the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder or install MacFUSE to write to the drive. If you choose to reformat it, use MS-DOS if you need to access it on a PC and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you don't.

(23622)

What do you mean by writing it? Will I lose anything stored on the drive?

What do you mean by writing it?

Making any changes to the drive.

Will I lose anything stored on the drive?

If you use MacFUSE, no. If you choose to reformat the drive, everything on it will be erased, so put everything that you want to keep in another location first.

(23635)

Pelilleuk

This refers to your specific problem of Owners Enabled NO

You may see the "Owners Enabled: No" line that has to be corrected. Open Terminal, enter the following (don't forget to replace "MacLife" with your drive name):

sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/MacLife

Instead of MacLife put in the name you gave your drive. Has to be done for each drive. Make sure you put in all the spaces. They are located after sudo, then before and after -a *Then hit enter*, not return.
You can copy and paste the above command if you prefer

I installed MacFUSE but I am not sure how to start it up. DO I read the documents that came with it?

I am still not sure how to get MacFuse to work after I install it.

Keith Gaboury1 wrote:
Pelilleuk

This refers to your specific problem of Owners Enabled NO

You may see the "Owners Enabled: No" line that has to be corrected. Open Terminal, enter the following (don't forget to replace "MacLife" with your drive name):

sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/MacLife

Instead of MacLife put in the name you gave your drive. Has to be done for each drive. Make sure you put in all the spaces. They are located after sudo, then before and after -a *Then hit enter*, not return.
You can copy and paste the above command if you prefer

I have a similar problem to the first post.
I have a 250 gig external firewire drive
that I named *the Gibson* and I was fiddling around in ownerships and permissions in the gibson info
and ended up not having the volume appear on my desktop anymore. I can search for it and I can see it and the files inside listed next to a white dotted line box for each but when I try and access the Gibson info box to change ownership permissions back to unlocked and *read and write* it is greyed out and says "you can only read" I've also tried to open the enclosing folder thinking I might be able to edit "volume" but that doesn't work.

in the disk utility it says owners enabled "no" just like the other guy.

I've tried

sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/the Gibson

(then hit enter)

but all I get is the message:

+vsdbutil: no valid volume UUID found on '/Volumes/the': No such file or director+

I don't know much about terminal so I was just trying what was posted on the board so I'm not even sure what result I should be expecting from that action.

Please help!!!

With the drive not appearing, I would disconnect the firewire, reboot, then reattach. This could possible be the cause for not showing.

I'm not a big terminal user, so as to why it didn't work, it'll take me time from friends to find out.
But guessing from the message, you might need to "repair disk" with Disk Utility.
I wouldn't be surprised if after repair, you have to log in as root, to adjust the ownership and permissions. It's possible you even hit the button "apply to enclosed items" too, while fooling with the drive.

MacYokel wrote:
+vsdbutil: no valid volume UUID found on '/Volumes/the': No such file or director+

Welcome to Apple Discussions!!

You are getting this because your disk name contains a space. You need to "hide" that space by putting the whole disk name in double quotes: "the Gibson".

I had a similar issue... I have an external hard drive that I set up to be bootable, but basically hold all my music. I want to boot from it to repair permissions on my main drive but it won't show up in the list of Statup Disks. I checked the drive in Disk Utility, and was "Owner Enabled: no" so I repaired that using the method in this discussion, thinking that would solve the problem, but it hasn't. Does anybody know why I can't boot from this drive?