Can't Change Permissions On My External Hard-Drive!?

See if this helps:


To fix this:

1. Launch Terminal, which resides in the Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities folder.

2. At the Terminal prompt, type the following command:

sudo chmod a+rwx "/Volumes/partition_name"

where: partition_name is the name of the affected partition.

3. Press Return.

4. Type your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.

5. At the Terminal prompt, type exit and press Return.

6. Quit (Command-Q) Terminal.

7. Relaunch Finder: Press and hold the Option key, click and hold mouse button 1 on the Finder icon in the Dock, select "Relaunch" from the Finder icon's contextual menu.

You should then see the volume, or be able to use Disk Utility to Unmount it, then Mount it and see it.

Reset the permissions for Group and Other for the partition as desired. Do not change the permissions for Owner.

If you want a volume / partition unmounted at startup, see:

• this tip Mac OS X Hints, or...

• this tip on the OSX86 Project forums.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

If Kappy's steps don't fix things, see Niel's guide.

I guess I should own up that their Dr. Smoke's steps.

Nah! He gets enough accolades to keep him satisfied. BTW, you're new avatar keeps throwing me for a loop, but I guess change is needed every so often.

Yeah, every once in a while it's nice to make a change. Hopefully tells people I'm a nice guy. Don't really know if that's working.