LaCie External Hard Drive Becomes Read Only

My LaCie 4TB HDD is used as a Time Machine backup - it has been working perfectly and did a backup less than an hour ago. When I tried to copy some files to it - not during a backup - it asked to be unlocked for access with my Admin password, which I did. The files copied successfully.

But now Time Machine is saying "Next backup: When disk is connected." And the info button says "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “VED 4TB. Files can’t be copied onto the backup disk because it is read-only. You may need to repair or erase the disk using Disk Utility. If the disk can’t be repaired, select a different disk for backups.”.

I ran Disk Repair on the HDD and it did the repairs.

When I try and unlock the HDD it allows me to but it doesn't actually unlock it.

This is the second disk that this has happened with, I believe this may be a long term problem with MacOS, if someone could point me in the direction of a thread I would be grateful.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)

3.5 GHz Intel Core i5

MacOS High Sierra Version 10.13.6

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.13

Posted on May 24, 2019 2:36 AM

Top-ranking reply

Joat the cat Author

Level 1

8 points

Posted on May 24, 2019 3:03 AM

Thank you for a speedy reply :)

I did as suggested and it unmounts, then mounts again.

However, since posting I tried the following:-

Unlocked the HDD in the Get Info panel

Changed "everyone" setting to "Read & Write" - the other two settings were already set to "Read & Write"

Under the tool icon I used the drop down to "Apply to enclosed items..." and a progress bar started doing that

NOTE: While I was waiting I Googled and came up with a terrible post which said NEVER do this... !!!!

Was panicking until the progress bar finished - thought I'd lost it all.

BUT, fingers crossed, this seems to have worked, just done a backup successfully...

The Time Machine icon hasnt reappeared on the HDD though, just a generic yellow one.

I'll try this on the previous HDD which had this problem and see if it works, nothing to lose really!

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LaCie External Hard Drive Becomes Read Only

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