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When I attempted to Export 41 photos I get the message below. I don't understand why "the volume 'Macintosh HD' is read only. Could someone please assist, thanks. Seckle
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.7
Hi Seckle,
looks like your external drive is set to status "read only".
Some people do that to protect the data, then nobody can accidentally delete any data on this drive.
Please read this
Change permissions for files, folders, or disks on Mac - Apple Support
This shows how you can set the status to "Read & Write"
Regards
Ralf
Ralf
Thanks for your reply, but the issue is that even when I unlock access to the Sharing & Permissions section of the external drive I cannot select any name or change the privileges as they are 'greyed' out. In other words nothing happens when I click on the names in the names column.
Am I doing something wrong still?
Hi Seckle,
what type of device its this external drive (Memorystick, SSD, ....)?
Was / is this drive used for TimeMachine backup?
Is this maybe a company device?
My company will protect their external devices so that only a company computer can write on them.
Can you copy other files with finder on this device?
Do you have Administrator rights on your computer?
Do you have a different external device, did you try to save photos / data on this device?
Ralf
Thanks for continuing to respond to my issue, but I've tried two types of external drive and I cannot write to either. I think it has something to do with my Macbook Air as the Sharing and Permissions for both external drives are the same. The drives were not used for TimeMachine backup's. I can copy files with finder on my Macbook Air and can also copy photos and other files to a memory stick.
I have Administrator rights on my Macbook, and as advised have tried a couple of large external drives. We are trying the external drives on another laptop.
Regards Seckle
Can you read without issues from these drives?
Do you have data on both external drives?
If yes I would copy the data to my internal drive and format the external drive with Disk Utility.
Maybe that will fix the issue.
When was the last time you saved data on these external drives?
What has changed between then and today?
Did you do an update on MacOS?
Thanks Ralf. I looks like it is the interface between my Macbook Air and the external drive, which are not compatible. The drives work fine on a Microsoft laptop.
I'll just get a Mac compatible external drive and be done with it.
Regards
Seckle
Macintosh HD is the name of the internal drive of a Mac. Try to export the photos to a folder in your Pictures folder or another folder in your user home folder or export to the Shared user folder, not to the top-level of your system volume. We are not supposed to write outside our user home folder. It is intentional that only the system can write directly to the top level of the Macintosh HD for security reasons. I would not try to change this.
Thanks Leonie. In the end I've purchased a Mac compatible 5TB external hard drive, and all should be good.
Regards
Seckle
I want to move my photos of my Mac to an external drive but I ger an error message, why?
