my external hard drive change to read only

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Level 1

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my external hard drive change to read only

I have been backing up my vids, pics, etc on my Seagate HDD for the past 2 months with my Macbook Air. All of a suddenly my external HD changed permissions to read only. I understand that this has been a hot topic for some time but I have not found the solution in any of the threads. Under the "Get info" tab "Sharing & Permissions" section it only reads "you can only read" with no other info. No mention of the users (I am the admin and there are no other users setup) or any other info and I can't click or hit anything (other than my head against the wall!!!!) If I try the Desktop Utilities route my Macbook Air recognizes the eternal hard drive but all buttons such as "verify Disk" etc are greyed out... no idea what I should do. Tried logging out of my user account and back in, tried ejecting and reconnecting but everything has failed.

Anyone with any ideas?! please need any help I can get. Thanks!

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Dec 30, 2011 8:44 AM

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Answer 1

samberl

Level 4

2,007 points

Dec 30, 2011 12:36 PM in response to cheeky9191

Did you reformat your Seagate drive for use with your Mac?

It may be NTFS PC-formatted, and the utility that allowed writing has not loaded or is not working following a system update.

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Answer 2

cheeky9191 Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 31, 2011 12:20 AM in response to samberl

yes, the HDD has been formatted to be used with Mac and PC.. I've been using it for a couple of months now with no issues, all of a sudden this happens and I can no longer transfer files to the HDD.

I haven't done any system updates either

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Answer 3

Dec 31, 2011 12:23 AM in response to cheeky9191

If the drive is formatted NTFS and has been working for months then soumds like the third pary software needed on OS X to write to NTFS has gone bad. You may want to reinstall it.

Allan

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Answer 4

cheeky9191 Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 31, 2011 6:29 AM in response to Allan Eckert

reinstall the Seagate software? will give it a go... thanks

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Answer 5

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,550 points

Dec 31, 2011 6:33 AM in response to cheeky9191

Better yet if you are using the drive for backing up the MBA then get another external HD. Format one or the other as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and use it for your MBA's backup drive and format the the other as you wish for use with the PC. It's penny wise and pound foolish (meaning it's unwise) to use the same EHD for a backup as you use for data storage. In the event the HD crashes you will have lost not only you backup but data too which invalidates the whole reason for backup!

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Answer 6

cheeky9191 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 3, 2012 10:18 AM in response to cheeky9191

so I tried reinstalling the Seagate drive and it didn't work either... any other ideas guys!?

thanks for the help!

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Answer 7

Jan 8, 2013 4:07 AM in response to cheeky9191

Disd you ever get a resolution to your problem? I have exactly the same problem with my ADATA HD710 I use for Time Machine, it works fine for a while, then for no apparant reason I can no longer write to the disc. Even though my permission is still read/write, I am told I can only read and everything is greyed out in disk utility. Previously fixed problem by reformatting, and starting again, but have just lost ability to write again. Need help!

FYI appears to happen when disc not connected to MacBook for a while. Disc fomatted Mac Os extended.

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