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Level 1

9 points

External Hard Drives Changing Permissions to Read Only

Three of my USB external hard drives have suddenly changed to read only. One of the times I was trying to transfer/back-up the files from one drive that had changed to read only to another external. Suddenly the second drive changed permissions. Then after plugging a third external, that drive changed permissions. They all were working perfectly fine with my computer and I have only been using them on MACS. Any explanations? Could there be something wrong with my USB ports? Is it possible to have a virus of some sort?

Thank you!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jan 7, 2011 8:02 AM

Best reply

Institian

Level 1

19 points

Posted on Jan 23, 2011 9:19 PM

Here's the thing that every forum I see keeps ignoring: The drives ALL worked BEFORE this problem NTFS or not, we were able to Read and Write with NO problems until, magically, the drive turned to read only. I am using a WD 2TB External USB Hard Drive. I have never formatted it, only used it right out the the box. I have PC's running XP, Vista, and Windows 7, and I have my Macs running OSX.

I have been Successfully transferring data between all of the computers with no problems until today. I transferred data literally 3 days ago from my Mac to my PC AND from my PC to my Mac using this drive. I always use the eject option on the drive. NTFS or not it DOESN'T matter. The issue is drives that worked with no issue suddenly becoming useless. Sadly this looks to be an issue with the Mac OS.

If we could get some true discussion and assistance on the root of the problem, or a patch from Apple, this would be great. I am not sure what is causing this but apparently it is no isolated incident as everyone is going form working to non-working without changing any settings.

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87 replies

Kappy

Level 10

361,765 points

Feb 17, 2011 12:28 PM in response to ronharp

Try the routine in the article link. The drive may be inaccessible, so you will need to follow the article's instructions to fix it.

ronharp

Level 1

0 points

Feb 17, 2011 12:59 PM in response to Kappy

Well, Fix No Access Permissions on HD just did not work. It seems that
the Ext HD just can not be seen using that process. Or, big OR, it just
may be an end user problem. I think most computer problems are just
that. lol

Thanks

Ron

ronharp

Level 1

0 points

Feb 17, 2011 4:21 PM in response to ronharp

I'm not sure if this will help anyone else but I finally was able to erase/format from DU. Then I just set up Time machine again and all is well. The "get info" shows the appropriate names and privileges in the permissions box. For those who need to keep the data already on the external HD this would not work.

Ron

Mar 3, 2011 5:16 AM in response to Institian

mate I agree with you 100%, and I'm sure many others also do. I've spent a very generous amount of time looking all over various forums and can't get a solution. It's not a problem with the flash drives, it's a problem with OSX. There is so much irrelevant tech/spec name dropping, and no real answers! NTFS this, FAT32 that, etc.

Mar 13, 2011 2:04 PM in response to beatlelili

I have a similar problem, I pugged in my Nexstar external 120G HD formatted with NTFS and all the rights locked up to Read-Only. A few things about the replies I have read:

1. I do NOT, repeat NOT, get a litte box in Get Info that allows me to "Ignore Permissions...," let alone change them in any way. The Users are set to the owner (my wife on the MB Air) and "everyone" and while "everyone" SEEMS to allow you to change permissions, the changes do not remain permanent and simply opening the popup to change them immediately after changing them the first time shows they have reverted to "No Access."

2. Disk Utility shows the drive bus with the name of the drive (Untitled) and the name of another drive, "disk3s2," which is greyed out. Neither the mounted drive, "Untitled," nor the unmounted drive, "disk3s2," can be verified or repaired or any other optional function and the unmounted drive cannot be mounted. So neither drive is accessible through the Disk Utility program in any way.

3. None of the Terminal tricks work. Terminal reports the drive is "read-only" and that's it. My tests include all of the suggestions in the Forum(s) around the Web.

Is it possible to just contact Apple about this? How do you go about doing that? It seems 10.6.6 is fairy unique compared to earlier versions or different enough to require its own specific solution.

Any ideas?

May 6, 2011 6:51 AM in response to beatlelili

To Kappy or who ever else can help,

Today is May 6th and I have the same problem as everyone else. I have had this rocstor T1 HD and have only used it with my 13" Macbook Pro OSX 10.6.7 I was just using it yesterday in my graphic design class with my laptop and this morning it says read only on me (admin) and read only on everyone. I can pull files from it, but I cannot write files to it. I do not have any option check boxes and all selections are greyed out. I'm a little confused why this suddenly happened. one curious part is that the info of my HD says i have 2 partitions, what does that mean. im a graphic designer and mac lover, but I'm no expert in these matters.

A LOT of help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time,

Zen

NeutrixX

Level 1

6 points

May 11, 2011 9:37 AM in response to zengwen07

To all aboard having this problem... OSX has a major problem on its hands. I too had a 2 TB Seagate external hard drive formatted Mac OSX Journaled and it had been working fine. Now, problems. It has grayed out all ability for changing permissions within the "info" field, and is only read only now. It started out with the "lost + found" folder showing up all of a sudden on my Seagate hard drive (which I believe is a Unix folder that shows up when problems of corruption are occurring when trying to mount a unix formatted drive). This "lost + found" folder had a no access setting on it, and I was able to change the permissions on it, and I erased it from the drive. Then after moving a few more movies around, and plugging and unplugging the drive a couple of times (properly ejecting it every time) it has grayed out all the permissions and the checklist. I cannot erase or add to the drive.I can however drag files off of it.

Now, let me explain exactly what I was doing with this drive. It was almost full (maybe 2 gigs left open), and I was dragging a 20 gig movie from it over to a 3 TB WD external HD. The Seagate drive was plugged into the Apple keyboard USB port, and the WD drive was plugged into the usb port on my G5 tower. Everything had been fine for months and months before. What is going on with OSX? Is this an official bug?

Verifying the drive with Drive Utility has done nothing (unlike what a previous post has said) and no offense to anyone here, but there is no way in h*ll I'm opening up terminal to do anything with this drive. I've got over 400 movies on this thing and I should not have to open up terminal to do anything with it.

NeutrixX

Level 1

6 points

May 11, 2011 9:46 AM in response to NeutrixX

To add to my post, I have a 2004 G5, running 10.5.8.

braegel

Level 1

0 points

Jun 24, 2011 7:44 AM in response to beatlelili

I have the same problem since today.

braegel

Level 1

0 points

Jun 24, 2011 7:45 AM in response to beatlelili

Maybe i shoud switch back to ubuntu :/

braegel

Level 1

0 points

Jun 24, 2011 7:58 AM in response to braegel

I could fix it myself.

I turned of File Sharing. And performed File Utilites Volume repair on several HDs and dmg in the left hand list.

Good Luck to you.

domlet

Level 1

0 points

Jul 17, 2011 8:32 PM in response to HWNewbie

Thanks! I had the same problem; external USB HD suddenly was Read Only.

This worked for me:

Step 1 - Open Disk Utility

Step 2 - Clicked on the Disk I was trying to fix.

Step 3 - on the Bottom Right hand side there is an option called Verify Disk.

Step 4 - Make sure the external HD is connected directly into the USB not through a hub.

Step 5 - After a long verifying process, both my external became read/write!

Sep 9, 2011 11:32 AM in response to Mr_Mxyzptlk

The Verify Disk trick has worked for me.

Another one that has worked in the past is to log out of the user account (Apple menu, last option) and then log back in to the same user you just logged out of.

I don't have any idea why either workaround works.

I administer about 10 computers that are primarily used for Final Cut Pro and they all use G-Tech drives for media. This problem started happening on all of them, and I think it either has something to do with upgrading to 10.6.7 or 10.6.8, or it has something to do with sharting preferences / screen sharing settings we started monkeying around with.

This morning we had an Avid Unity (which is a SAN, I think) partition have the same problem, and you can't verify those disks... so it is starting to worry me. The user had resarted the computer a couple of times, and that fixed the permissions issue for now.

PJRives

Level 1

85 points

Nov 21, 2011 10:16 AM in response to MacMacken

settings can be weird and things can get corrupted. This is why that 'verify disk' trick works. It forces the system to recheck all the various settings like how the drive is formatted, is there a proper directory and so on.

And yes sometimes things can go wonky when you are doing OS updates (especially if you are doing a big one like Snow Leopard to Lion) or turning sharing on and off.

That said, if this media is mission critical it is a very very good idea to have a second copy of it. Whether it is another hard drive or keeping the original digital cards/tape.

leelee15

Level 1

10 points

Nov 28, 2011 4:52 AM in response to beatlelili

Just came upon this thread due to hiccup with my macbook pro last night; my OS glitched unexpectedly with thin blue lines across the screen; it restarted and seemed fine; this morning when trying to save to my external Seagate drive I came upon the mysterous "write only" condition mentioned by others; tried the most simple out: I ejected the hard drive; unplugged the USB and replugged it; this unplug/replug refresh seemed to work; the macbook pro now "sees" the drive as both write and read; whew!

Thanks for all the other insights offered.

External Hard Drives Changing Permissions to Read Only