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AriGold

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 13, 2010
92
1
After doing a fresh install of yosemite on my MBP, my external hard drive is now 'read only' and cannot copy files to it.

Any ideas on what has changed and what I can do to fix the problem. I cannot format the drive as all my files are on it.
 
  • Select the disk and choose File > Get Info.
  • Click the disclosure triangle next to Sharing & Permissions to expand that section.
  • Select the “Ignore ownership on this volume” checkbox.
 
It says 'You can only read' only.

There are no other options etc.
 
Can't you change the "Privilege" to "Read & Write" for yourself?
 
No. It just says what i posted above. permissions in disk utility are greyed out also.
 
23w31g9.png
 

It's read-only because the disk format is NTFS. You can see this in the Format item under the General heading: "Windows NT File System (NTFS)"

OS X can read NTFS by default, but not write it.

"What changed" is that you had an extension that provided read/write capability, and that extension doesn't work in Yosemite, or it was removed by your fresh install.

There are several different products that provide this capability. We can only guess which one you used.
 
It's read-only because the disk format is NTFS. You can see this in the Format item under the General heading: "Windows NT File System (NTFS)"

OS X can read NTFS by default, but not write it.

"What changed" is that you had an extension that provided read/write capability, and that extension doesn't work in Yosemite, or it was removed by your fresh install.

There are several different products that provide this capability. We can only guess which one you used.

Ok thanks. I honestly don't remember if I had something installed which allowed me to read/write. Is there a common one I could try?

I will have a research and see if I can find something.
 
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