i cannot save my folder to the external hard drive by simply dragging it. how can save a folder to a hard drive. my hard drive is 500 gig free space and folder is about 5 gig file. please help.
iPhone 4, Serial: 79037G2YA4S
What happens when you open a Finder window showing the external drive, and a Finder window showing the folder you want to copy, and drag it (the folder you want to copy) from one window to the other?
Similarly, I have 2 ext hdd. I select/copy a folder from one. When I switch to the other drive, the Paste Item is grayed out. I also tried to drag the folder from one Finder window and when I come to the other Finder window of the other drive, the icon changes to invalid or not allowed (ie the circle with a slash symbol).
Do a Get Info on the hard drive's disk icon. At the bottom of the Info window, under Sharing & Permissions, make sure "you" (your user account name) can Read & Write. Or, you can check the box that says Ignore ownership on this volume.
Under Sharing & Permissions it only lists "You can only read". How can I get these options enabled?
- Read & Write
- Ignore ownership on this volume
If it's external drive, and you check the box for Ignore ownership on this volume, the permissions setting should not matter.
Unfortunately the option "Ignore ownership on this volume" does not show up under Sharing & Permissions. I only see "You can only read". Am I looking at the right place?
Oh, sorry, I misread what you wrote previously.
Is this a hard drive that you initialized on this Mac, from the current user account? If it was set up from another user account, your user account may not have permissions.
On the list under You can only read, there is a plus sign at the bottom. Click that to add a Name. NOTE: If you cannot modify the list, click the Lock icon at the bottom left corner and give authorization.
Click the plus sign. Select your user account. If your name appears on the list now, set the Privilege to Read & Write.
Yes, the ext hdd was a plug and play device. I originally just plugged it in a Windows laptop (which is already dead).
There is no plus sign under You can only read. How else can I modify/fix this permission issue on this ext hdd?
Oh, that may explain the problem...
I originally just plugged it in a Windows laptop (which is already dead).
Mac OS X can read and write the Windows format called FAT32. However, the NTFS format is read-only. If this is the case, you can't make this drive read/write, with its current formatting.
What you can do, if the Mac's internal drive or other external hard drive has enough space, is copy everything to a folder on one of those drive volumes. Then, use Disk Utility to erase the drive. In Disk Utility, be sure to select the DRIVE (not the volume intended under the drive) in the Disk Utility sidebar.
On the Erase tab, if this drive will only be connected to a Mac going forward, select Format of Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If it needs to be usable with a Macs or WIndows PC, select MS-DOS (FAT) as Format, which is FAT32.
After erasing (reformatting), you should be able to copy back the data it had before, and any new data.
Hmmm ... re-format to FAT? I may have to think more about doing this as I would think NTFS is a better format than FAT --- but of course I end up with my present issues. I just don't understand why the MAC cannot read/write to an NTFS format whereas Windows can. This bugs me. But thanks a lot for your patience. Appreciate it :-)
NTFS is the Windows native format, so obviously it is supported by Windows. Macs have their own native format.
At least Mac OS X has read/write support for FAT32 and read-only support for NTFS. That is very convenient. There is no built-in support for a Mac-formatted disk in Windows.
Reformat to FAT32 only if you need Windows and Mac read/write access to that drive. Otherwise, use the Mac's native format, which is called Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in Disk Utility.
There is a third-party product (not free) that adds NTFS read-write support to Mac OS X
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
I've never used it, and I'm somewhat wary of products that modify how a Mac works at a very low level, especially one that is related to writing data.
6 weeks ago I had NO PROBLEM writing to this external hard drive. Now I have read only permissions. It is a 4TB drive with about half empty. I really dont want to copy, erase, reformat and reload 2 TB of videos, music and photos.
How can it be working fine 8 weeks ago, and now not??
OS X El Capitan: If you don’t have the permissions to open a file or folder
and enter an administrator name and password. If you can’t change the permissions, contact an administrator of your Mac or the owner of the file or folder.
Last Modified: Apr 13, 2016
OS X El Capitan: If you don’t have the permissions to open a file or folder
saving a folder to external hard drive
