external hard drive won't let me write

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Level 1

16 points

external hard drive won't let me write

I don't know if you guys can help me or not. I am using a Mac running El Captian 10.11.4

I have a 4 TB external hard drive mounted. I have a bunch of stuff on there: movies, photos etc, but still have 3TB left. I wanted to add a folder of photos. It won't let me.

I tooled around a bit and discovered that the hard drive was reading as not writable. Ran a disk utility on it (first aid button), and now it says it is writable, but when I try to drag and drop my folder to the hard drive, it won't stay.

I am, for most intents and purposes, computer skills deficient. I have done all I can think of to do, and apparently do not possess the skills to tell Google exactly what my problem is so I can find a relevant post.

I'm certain someone on this forum is more intelligent than I, and I would be grateful for any assistance.

The hard drive is a Seagate 4TB drive. connected via USB. 3.42 TB available. Owners enabled. There is an icon for it on my desktop. When I click on that, then right click and hit “get info” it brings up a window and down at the bottom, under “sharing & permissions” it says “You can only read”

I have NO IDEA how to fix that. I have been able to write to this thing since I got it. I have not unplugged it without ejecting it to my knowledge. 😕

Thank you in advance for any insight.

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Apr 27, 2016 5:06 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

KimUserName

Level 4

1,900 points

Apr 27, 2016 6:18 PM in response to deschi

If you drive is formatted in NTFS that means it is formatted for Windows.

If it is then Windows will be able to read/write but Mac will only be able to Read. The best option is to usParagon NTFS for Mac® 14

The other option is to reformat the drive in a Mac format (Mac OS Extended Journaled)

You can reformat to exFAT which can be read and written to be both Mac and Windows, but there are some incompatibilities reported.

Kim

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Answer 2

deschi Author

Level 1

16 points

Apr 29, 2016 3:32 PM in response to deschi

PSYCH!

Just left the desktop to go eat. Did not power down or change anything as my garmin map updates were running.

Came back up and moved the mouse to check email. Down right side of desktop were about 15 notifications about "seagate drive not properly ejected" or some such verbiage.

Now the damnable thing won't let me write to it again.

I know this isn't an apple product, but if someone has any ideas, I am game. Rapidly losing my temper. 😠

Looking for forums for the drive I own as we speak. Why this is suddenly an issue I don't know. I have personally written over 500GB of stuff to this drive from THIS COMPUTER. AARRGGHH!!

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Answer 3

Apr 27, 2016 5:17 PM in response to deschi

Hi Deschi:

Plug your external drive in, and when it shows up on the desktop, right click on it and select Get Info.

See what is says under Format?

Kim

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Answer 4

deschi Author

Level 1

16 points

Apr 28, 2016 8:25 AM in response to KimUserName

Thank you, sorry been so long to reply.

My drive is formatted "MacOS Extended (Case-Sensitive, Journaled)"

I have written to this drive from this computer before. This is a recent development and I am flummoxed, although that isn't particularly hard to do...

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Answer 5

Apr 28, 2016 8:58 AM in response to deschi

Is it possible to try the drive on another Mac.

This will help to determine if the drive or the computer is the problem.

Kim

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Answer 6

deschi Author

Level 1

16 points

Apr 28, 2016 12:41 PM in response to KimUserName

I might be able to try it on my daughter's laptop....hadn't thought of that.

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Answer 7

deschi Author

Level 1

16 points

Apr 29, 2016 2:15 PM in response to deschi

Sigh. I have no idea what just happened, but I properly ejected the seagate drive, plugged it into my daughter's laptop. Was able to move a document to the drive.

ejected it from her laptop and plugged into the desktop and tried to move the aforementioned folder of pictures to the drive. AND IT WORKED.

??? 😕

Now I feel more like an idiot than before. But it seems to be working, so....

Thank you kindly for your assistance.

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Answer 8

deschi Author

Level 1

16 points

Apr 29, 2016 3:55 PM in response to deschi

Ok....

Noticed this:

When I click go>utilities>disk utility it brings up the mac's internal disk and the seagate drive. But....it shows as a "parent" type folder the seagate drive as full, then indented as what looks like a sub folder, the seagate drive (has an eject symbol next to it) as not full.

am including pics. Any of you smart people know what this means? Feeling really really stupid.

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Answer 9

Duane

Level 10

124,267 points

Apr 29, 2016 4:23 PM in response to deschi

That is expected. The "parent" item is the physical drive. It shows as full because you have one partition which is using the entire space of the drive. It is NOT an indication of the actual amount of data stored on the drive.

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Answer 10

Apr 29, 2016 5:17 PM in response to deschi

Those pictures look normal. Here is mine.

When your drive shows up with Disk Utility, have you tried to repair it using first aid.

Also are you concerned about the data on the drive? If it works for a while and then stops working, maybe you should try to get it working and try copying the files off of it.

Then you can move them to another external drive.

Kim

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Answer 11

deschi Author

Level 1

16 points

Apr 30, 2016 12:59 PM in response to KimUserName

Yes, I have "first aid"ed it twice.

I guess I am going to have to evaluate that. I have never had a problem with this drive before. 😟

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