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c1defence Author

Level 1

19 points

back up drives

External drives tend to be unreliable, so I have been using WD, Seagate and Toshiba external drives to also back up. For the past couple of months my Mac Pro (1 TB capacity - 377 GB free) is not recognising the external drives for back up. All three seem to have some fault!

For example, when I plug the Seagate drive to the usb, it shows up on the screen, and Disk Utility. Info shows that its capacity is 2 TB and available is 377 GB, used 1.62 TB. First Aid failed - First Aid process has failed. If possible back up the data on this volume. Click Done to continue.

Seagate's last backup is 29th November 2020.

Seagate Dashboard shows 0 MB free.

Time Machine(?) message states that the Backup Failed - TM couldn't complete the back up to the Seagate Drive. Files can’t be copied onto the backup disk because it is read-only. (How to make it Read & Write?) 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.

Latest successful backup: 29 November 2020

WD has 914 GB of 2 TB available

Toshiba has 86 GB of 2 TB available.

Any suggestions please?

Especially as all three drives have the same problem.

Posted on Feb 24, 2021 1:34 PM

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

133,891 points

Posted on Feb 24, 2021 3:42 PM

A drive becomes read-only when it has unresolved issues. MacOs does this to keep form compounding the issues.

Restart the machine in recovery mode, and launch Disk Utility. Try to repair each of the drives.

It is not likely that all are irreparably bad, but it is possible.

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back up drives

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