Lock Icon Missing For Seagate External Hard Drive

Question

Lock Icon Missing For Seagate External Hard Drive

Hello,

Please help! Today I erased my mac's hard drive to clear it out and start anew. Obviously, I backed up my important files onto my external hard drive. The problem now is that my hard drive has its "Sharing & Permissions" set to "You can read only". None of the solutions I've found can explain why the Lock Icon has disappeared entirely from the "Get Info" window (See picture). I would like to have this hard drive set to "Read and Write", or exactly as I had it before.

Sincerely,

Nicolas

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2009), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Feb 7, 2017 12:17 PM

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Answer 1

OGELTHORPE

Level 9

57,329 points

Feb 7, 2017 1:19 PM in response to SalocinAazujrac

It may be due to the fact that the HDD is formatted NTFS, a windows format, that allows you to read but not write to it.

You can install a third party application such as Paragon or Tuxera that will allow you to write to the HDD.

Ciao.

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Answer 2

Feb 7, 2017 6:01 PM in response to OGELTHORPE

Thanks for replying! Unfortunately, I don't have a Windows computer and so that can't be the case. The external hard drive was working for this computer before I formatted my macbook pro. It must be something else. Any ideas why the Lock Icon would be missing?

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Answer 3

Feb 7, 2017 6:03 PM in response to Esquared

Thanks for replying Esquared! Yeah that can't be the case because I have macbook pro and the external hard drive was working on it before I formatted the hard drive on my computer. Any idea why the Lock Icon would be missing, and how to get it back ?

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Answer 4

OGELTHORPE

Level 9

57,329 points

Feb 8, 2017 3:02 AM in response to SalocinAazujrac

SalocinAazujrac wrote:

Unfortunately, I don't have a Windows computer and so that can't be the case. The external hard drive was working for this computer before I formatted my macbook pro. It must be something else. Any ideas why the Lock Icon would be missing?

The fact is the HDD is formatted for a Windows PC (NTFS) and Macs can read but not write to NTFS HDDs. If you reformat the HDD to a Mac compatible format, I suspect the the full sharing & permissions section will appear in the information display with the lock.

Ciao.

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Answer 5

Esquared

Level 6

12,415 points

Feb 7, 2017 1:16 PM in response to SalocinAazujrac

Macs cannot natively write to a NTFS formatted disk. You must have installed some kind of 3rd party software for that, Tuxera perhaps? Reinstall it to get full access to your drive again.

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