How do I authenticate my external hard drive?

Select your external hard drive in the Finder.

Do a Get-info and and check the "ignore ownership on this drive" box at the bottom of the panel.

Oops, it should be "ignore ownership of this volume", my mistake.

Is the external drive bootable or are you just using it for data?

You can't ignore ownership on a Time Machine backup volume. Are you trying to move files into or out of your TM repository (backups.backupdb)? That won't work. Use the TM interface to retrieve or delete files.

Otherwise, select the folder containing the problem files in the Finder and open the Info window. Click the lock icon and authenticate. In the Sharing & Permissions section, give yourself read & write access and delete all other entries. Close the Info window and try again.

Launch the Terminal application; e.g., by entering the first few letters of its name in a Spotlight search. Copy or drag -- do not type -- the line below into the Terminal window, then press the space bar:

ls -Odel

Now switch to the Finder and drag the icon of the problem folder into the Terminal window. Some more text will appear after what you entered. Press the return key. Post the line(s) of output that appear below what you entered.

I had my hard drive plugged into Apple's 2nd generation Airport Extreme and was using it for storage. for some reason when I reformatted the drive it would not show up on the desktop when I would connect to the drive, furthermore at some point when I connected to the drive it would not show anything. I tried unlocking the drive setting permissions and I ended up worse having an alias type file on my desktop that I had to route and all that stuff. but by moving the alias to connect to the files back to the drive folder it would come with that error of the click to authenticate. I could reach the files but not like I wanted to with ease. so just now I tried one last thing moving the folder alias to get to the actual drive into the macintosh HD on the start screen/ desktop, by dragging the folder to there and back into the file system maverick gave me the option to authenticate and now everything is back to normal aside from not being able to see the Wi-Fi drive on my desktop when I am connected to it.

Right click the hard drive, and click "Get Info."

In the very bottom right corner of this pop up window, there should be a lock icon. Make sure it looks unlocked. if it looks locked, click on it and put your password in to unlock it.

Next, look for the section called "Sharing & Permissions:" Under that section should be a grid with "Name" on one side and "Privilege" on the other side. Look under the name section for "everyone" then look at what privilege it is set to. Right now it is probably set to something like "Read only." This means you only have permission to look at the files, but if you go to add a file (write) to the drive it will always ask for a password. To fix this click on the privilege and change it to "Read & Write."

Hope that helps!

Hi there,

I have a similar issue with a drive that I restored onto a new drive by copying from my Time MAchine Backup. Now everytime I try and copy onto this drive I have to authenticate it first. I have done the instructions you suggested and this is what I get...

pro-tools:~ mikethornton$ ls -Odel /Volumes/Storage\ 2

drwx---rwx+ 51 mikethornton staff - 1802 3 Mar 09:31 /Volumes/Storage 2

0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike.

text is light grey at bottom left, you have to first unlock the drive using your Password, then the option will appear