Another External Hard Drive became "Read Only"

[PhillyGuy72]

I know this is not the first post about this issue, I just can't seem to find a fix for this or why it keeps happening. Once again out of the blue last night, this is now the second external hard drive that suddenly changed to "read only" in less than 2 years.

These are Mac ready WD external hard drives, not NTFS/Windows, FAT, EX FAT formatted drives. Also not the portable ones that simply gain power from the computers USB only. These are powered into an electrical socket. (Not sure if this matters?)

First time this happened was Nov. 2015 on a 2TB Western Digital drive (pop up error of "cannot repair 2TB" showed up), even though I could still access the files on that drive, I immediately went out that day and bought a 4TB drive, backed up a ton of files from that 2TB drive just in case. As of today, this older 2TB drive still works..it's still a "read only" drive.

Last night this 21 month old Western Digital 4TB suddenly became a "read only" hard drive also. The little pop up box appeared (OSX can't repair 4TB). Again, I still see the files on this 4TB drive..nothing is lost thankfully. I've been in the long process of backing THIS one up to a cloud service, and other files to yet another emergency external HD I got for Xmas 2 years ago. (I ONLY use this spare as a backup, time machine. I unplug it and it's stored away.)

I tried the Disk Utility - First Aid in El Capitan, which personally I do not like compared to the older Disk Utility on previous OS Xs. Disk Warrior and even Paragon for Mac OS X with no luck. I unplugged it and hooked it up on a Mac using older Yosemite Disc Utility, the "Verify/Repair Permissions" is not an option, it's grayed out

It looks like the file system on these just seem to change from "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" to "Mac OS Extended" Why, I have no idea. It says this drive was "modified at 6:24 (Aug 27)," I didn't modify this drive, I was working on photos in Lightroom/Photoshop and may have saved pictures to that drive around that time. That's the only thing I can think of when it comes to "modifying."

Anyway, the question is..and I apologize if it's been asked numerous times in the past - Is there a way to change these permissions back to Read, Write? I've seen answers on other forums about changing permissions using Terminal. "Sudo" codes, not sure if i trust these.
Or do I have to just reformat the darn drives and start from scratch. At this point, the older 2TB drive..I have no problem doing this. Lot of older files on there I backed up already...probably a lot of files here I wont even miss when I wipe it clean.

This is beyond frustrating - but like I said, I'm glad right now I can see the files...I can access them back them up.

I've searched all over - forums, Apple Discussions, YouTube videos that go back to 2008 when it comes to this "Read Only" change. A lot of the issues seem to be people have Windows NT file systems on these drives. It shows the solution. Not many quick solutions about MAC OS file systems becoming read only's Seems to be a popular problem.

Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

"First time this happened was Nov. 2015 on a 2TB Western Digital drive (pop up error of "cannot repair 2TB" showed up), even though I could still access the files on that drive, I immediately went out that day and bought a 4TB drive, backed up a ton of files from that 2TB drive just in case. As of today, this older 2TB drive still works..it's still a "read only" drive."

My best suggestion is:
NEXT time, buy SOMETHING OTHER THAN a WD drive.

I'd recommend Toshiba or HGST (Hitachi).

I'd also recommend the 2.5" form factor. Get a "bare drive", a USB3 2.5" enclosure, and "put it together" yourself.

Final thought:
Be thankful the drives failed to "read only mode", not "dark".
At least you should still be able to get your data off of them...

 

[PhillyGuy72]

Final thought:
Be thankful the drives failed to "read only mode", not "dark".
At least you should still be able to get your data off of them...

Trust me, I am very thankful I was able to back everything up. This is what I did to that emergency drive. I then reformatted both the 2tb and 4tb drives, it took. They are normal again...for now.

 

[gian8989]

Have you tried to use it in windows or linux?

 

[cynics]

Are you sure it was journaled to begin with and you aren't just now noticing it is now? Definitely not saying you aren't telling the truth but honestly, how often do people look at this? When navigating to the volume via terminal and typing "ls -l" what are the permissions and owners? (ls list contents, -l list in long format like permission, owners, etc).

Once it is completely backed up I would try using terminal to change flags (chflags), change owner (chown) and then change modes (chmod). I never needed to do this for your situation so without research I don't know exactly how I would go about it but something like...

sudo chflags -R nouchg (volume)
sudo chown -R (owner:group) (volume)
sudo chmod -R 775 (volume)

Again, don't use that without researching (there are people a lot smarter than I am with terminal that will hopefully chime in) but that should recursively remove the flags, set the owner and change the permission to readable and executable for all/readable, writeable, executable for the owner(s).

Depending on the drive status, commands in terminal could kick back an error anyway. No reason not to trust them as long as you have the information on the drive backed up (aka nothing to lose) once someone with more experience chimes in with proper terminal commands.

If you are ever in doubt of a terminal command just google it or open terminal and type "man (command)" ex. "man chmod", the output will be the "manual" for that command (q to quit).

 

[Ledgem]

I don't know why it's happening, but I have two suggestions.

First, your best shot at being able to repair the drives and salvage the data would be to use DiskWarrior. It's an expensive program ($120 as of the time of this writing) but still the best. I had a somewhat similar issue with a Drobo (due to the drive being unmounted improperly), and DiskWarrior saved me. (Drobo has since fixed the issue, too.) I can't promise that DiskWarrior will be able to unlock your drives, but if there's any bit of software that can, I'd bet on that one.

Second, whether the drives come formatted for Mac or not, I'd recommend formatting every new drive that you get, yourself. It's safer that way.

Third, did you try reformatting any of your locked drives? You'll lose all of the data on them, but the drive will likely work again. I say that because these are standard mechanical hard drives, correct? Not SSDs? If they're mechanical drives then the problem is something in software, rather than hardware. SSDs are supposed to fail into a read-only mode, but mechanical HDDS become unworkable entirely. That macOS is giving you an error but seemingly still reading from the drives just fine means that there's likely a software-based issue. DiskWarrior might be able to get them workable again without redoing the entire thing, but otherwise, a format will clear any software-based errors.

 

[gian8989]

If I can suggest you next time you have to format your hdd in something different from apple system, just do it in windows. Disk utility always gives me problem (the old disk utility was way better).

 

[HDFan]

I have had several drives for some reason have their permissions changed at the root level so that I could not add any folders there. Cynics response above gives the commands that you need. However:

1. Check that your have access to the volume.

cd /Volumes

and do an ls -l:

drwxr-xr-x 34 root wheel 1224 Sep 1 23:51 NOwritedisk
drwxrwxr-x 42 me wheel 1496 Sep 2 00:15 CANwritedisk

If I do a cd NOwritedisk and then a "mkdir test" it will fail as I do not have permissions to write to the directory (I'm not root, and the only member of the wheel group is root).

However if I do a "cd CANwritedisk" and do the "mkdir test" the directory is made, since I (me) have read, write and execute permissions on the directory.

So when I couldn't write to the "Canwritedisk" because it was owned my root I changed the ownership to "me".

2. Once you get access to the volume, move into the root directory "cd CANwritedisk" and do an ls -l. If you have write permissions and can create a directory or file then I would stop right there. The recursive option is extremely powerful, and particularly if this is your boot volume by modifying permissions on every file in your system (if applied at the root leveL) would likely be disastrous.

I once tried changing permissions on some system files thinking I knew what I was doing and the result was a bit of a disaster. Change the fewest permissions that will allow you to do what you need to do.

 

[AppleDroid]

I can add to the list of users with a WD External drive that has issues with the latest versions of Sierra. My 6TB WD Mybook worked perfectly with TM for over a year and now after it wakes from sleep the drive either shows no content or everything is locked down. I have to force eject the drive and then reconnect it in order to get it to work again.