external hard drive read only

Check the Format of the drive (select it and Get Info) if originally set up for PC it's possible the Mac can only Read it not write to it, to read and write with both Mac and PC it needs to be FAT32 (MS-DOS in Disc Utility)

If not the Format then perhaps the Permissions aren't correct, they will show at the bottom of the Get Info window and can be changed by clicking the padlock, entering the admin password, then setting to allow your username to read and write.

You can try the Tuxera NTFS Preference Panel (it's not free but if you can't move that data and reformat ...)

http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

Tuxera NTFS isn't free, but their sibling product, NTFS-3G is.

I use NTFS-3G and can find nary a reason to use the paid version. The only viable reason to use the Paid Tuxera version is it is said to be a hair faster.

Tuxera has it on their site under "open source". Apple does post it too.

Download NTFS3G from Apple's website:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html

I tried that but it refused to work for me, YMMV ...

Just an FYI to the thread: I've used NTFS-3G but now use Tuxera. NTFS-3G works but on my system choked on very large files. (Larger than 20GB.) Tuxera in my testing so far has handled very large files (up to 100GB.) I didn't notice that much of the claimed speed improvement, but I was concentrating on the stability with large files.

@Sasan, If you regularly move the external drive between a PC and the Mac, you may want to consider reformatting the external drive as FAT32. This is so that you avoid the possibility that new updates to OSX may have issues with NTFS-3G (or Tuxera.) Otherwise try NTFS-3G first since it's free. But if your files are large or you notice instability with NTFS-3G, then try Tuxera. (Tuxera has a 15 day trial.)

I used the free NTFS-3G drivers for a few years with no issues, and I "upgraded" to the Paragon commercial drivers earlier this year. The Paragon drivers seem a little faster and support a few NTFS features a little better, but I have had no problems with either of those.

In my house, we have 5 ThinkPads that run Windows XP or Windows 7, so it was cheaper for me to keep my MacBook Pro's external drives formatted NTFS and buy a driver for it to get ful access to the NTFS drives than for me to buy drivers for 5 PC's to get write access to my HFS+ formatted drives. I did buy drivers for 3 of the 5 ThinkPads in the end because some of my Mac utilities really do work better with HFS+ formatted drives. This also allows my BootCamp partition to have full access to the Mac boot partition so I have less wasted space. I keep my Thunderbird profiles (and caches) on the Mac Partition, and I keep my FireFox profiles (and caches) on my Windows 7 partition. Both OSes access teh exact same files just fine (just not at the same time).

FAT 32 (MS-DOS format in Disc Utility) is the sure fire way to be able to Read and Write from both Mac and PC

Hope you can help. I had a similar problem so downloaded the NTFs-3g software. Now when I try to connect to my hard drive, I get the error msg 'NTFS-3G could not mount/dev/disk1s1 at /volumes/Elements because the following problem occured: /Libary/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/support.fusefs.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) link error; check the system/kernal logs for errors or try kextutil(8). the MacFUSE file system is not available (71)'.

Please help as now I cant even locate my drive and have all my Music, photos on it.

Thanks.

...(libkern/kext) link error; check the system/kernal logs for errors or try kextutil(8). the MacFUSE file system is not available (71)'...

All of the NTFS add ons to allow writing to NTFS partitions use MacFUSE. It looks like your installation of MacFUSE is failing to run. Try completely uninstalling NTFS-3G and MacFuse. Before reinstalling NTFS-3G, see below.

...Please help as now I cant even locate my drive and have all my Music, photos on it.

Note that OSX can read NTFS partitions without additional software. So after uninstalling NTFS-3G and MacFUSE, be sure you can mount the drive normally on the Mac first.

(IOW, physically unplug your NTFS drive for safety. Uninstall NTFS-3G and MacFUSE. Reboot the Mac. Plug in the NTFS drive and be sure your files are ok.)

Then if necessary, reinstall the NTFS-3G. As this time, the current version is 2011.4.12. You don't mention what version of OSX you're running but Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and Lion work with 2011.4.12.

Hi please help.

I had a similar problem. I downloaded the ntfs program and still got no where. I then tried to uninstall and now have the message:

I cant locate the drive what so ever. I dont mind losing the data I have stored on it as this is all backed up. All I want to do is locate drive and start using it?? How simple can this be.

FYI: Your error message is not displaying on your post.

And since it's been several months since you've last posted basically the same thing, it's probably best to ask in the NTFS-3G forums since it is Tuxera's product, not Apple's.

I rebooted my external HD and it reset itself to read-write.

I can not locate the harddrive anymore and even though I have deleted ntfs-3g (it was not working anyway and tryed to follow suggestions on this side) now I am getting this message:

NTFS-3g could not mount /dev/disk2s1at /Volume/New Volume because the following problem occured:

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libfuse.2.dylib

Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g

Reason: image not found

WHAT TO DO? PLEASE HELP