External Drive Permission Issue

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Recently had my main SSD drive die and had to replace it. Got my previous setup restored but now have permission issues with the secondary internal drive in my Mac mini.

Many of the files and folders on the secondary drive are incorrect and require authentication every time I want to copy, rename, or delete files or folders there.

Looking at the permissions of these files and folders, 'Fetching...' just appears and never resolves.




While I can unlock then add my own admin profile and give it Read & Write privileges, doing this for every file and folder would take forever. Going to the gear drop-down and selecting "Apply to enclosed items..." only changes those immediately within the folder or drive, not the many files and folders further within the hierarchy.

What's the best way to restore the correct read and write permission to my drive?

 

[MacUser2525]

What's the best way to restore the correct read and write permission to my drive?

If it is only a storage drive then open Terminal (in the Applications => Utilities folder) then type in and hit enter key sudo chown -R your_user_name:staff /Volumes/drive_name/* this will change every directory/file on the drive to your ownership. If it has an OS on the drive then you will not want to do this as there are directories/files on it that need to be owned by the root user.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Thank you sir.

 

[MacUser2525]

Thank you sir.

Your welcome.

 

[cswifx]

Note that if your drive isn't an HFS/HFS+ drive, permissions will most likely not work.