Quick Tip: Solving "Read Only" External Drive Problems on Your Mac
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2024
- More and more people are finding themselves using both Macs and Windows based PCs. While compatibility is almost a non-issue now days between Macs and PCs, as well as Macs and third party peripherals, there is one area that may still cause confusion.
In this tutorial I will explain the "Read Only" error you may run into while using external storage devices, and also show you how simple it is to fix.
![GEEK TIMË [OFFICIAL AUDIO]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ry-6RvkH880/mqdefault.jpg)
9 years later and this video is still helpful. Recently switched to Mac and was having a huge issue with my external drive until I found this.
Well obviously I knew the solution was to format it. That's why I came to this video to find an alternative way without having to delete 500GB worth of storage
Well, save it.
For example I can't since that's why I have the external drive :\
yeah, reformatting is a pretty obvious solution, I was expecting something that will allow me to avoid messing with backing up of 2TB drive and then restoring the data...
@@iklimchuk yeah same here except
Indeed. Cpt. Obvious. I have a drive that crashed, is therefore locked and I need to copy the files but don't have rights and can't change them. I hate Apple more and more.
10 years later this video is still helpful.
Posted 9 years ago and it’s the best “How to” video I have ever watched on RUclips. Thanks a lot!
This video is perfect: the problem and resolution are clearly stated and shown without extraneous info. It is professionally produced and is easy to follow and understand. As a former technical writer, I applaud Tuts+ -- and I thank you for solving my external hard drive issue!
I'm watching this 7 years later (2020) and. you just saved me 4TB worth of storage! Thank you so much!!!!
I had this problem with a seagate drive but you can read and write without reformating if you go to their website and download paragon
www.seagate.com/support/downloads/ or just search "seagate downloads"
Kpheark - Kai Hammond I did download paragon and it still didn’t let me write it - it was still read only
pause on 2:56, messages: would you like to hook up? lol
+Mind Of Creators lmao good catch!
+Mind Of Creators lol nice catch XD
I wonder what "Re: Last night" is all about haha
hahaha! How very observant of you.
lol this is why I love the internet
Wow, they say, Old is Gold. A video almost 7 years ago, you made saved my day. I couldn't find any other clip better than this. Thank you so much.
but what if you have 800gb files in your HDD out of 1tb and you have to make it work with a Mac? This is where my frustration is right now.
Install Tuxera NTFS
ohh yes what if you have tons of data on your external hard drive and you don't have much time to move it to some other drive , what if you have to fix it while having all the data on board....any solution???
Stop buying Apple products.
@@elkie6320 Thanks man, Tuxera helped a lot, no need to format the entire HDD, It's allowing me to delete the files I want !
9 years later you are still helping people. Thanks a lot!
This isn't any good because my external hard drive is the problem and there's so much on there that I can't just copy it across to my mac.
Jothy I can really see this being a major problem
bob lenson lol
Dropbox?
Out of every video online this is the only video that actually helped me solve my issue. Thank you so much for posting and sharing.
TL;DW (too long, didn't watch):
Copy all stuff from your drive to desktop or wherever
Reformat drive to MS-DOS or ExFat for PC/Mac, or Mac OSX Journaled for Mac only
Copy all stuff back to your drive
Problem solved
Michelle L So in other words there is no quick way for me to do this.My external 1TB drive is filled up but for 2 gb room. I need to copy one folder from my Work Mac to my Home PC, prefferably through External harddrive.
I will not copy all my 1 terrabyte files onto my work computer just to re-format the drive.
Damn you MAC. Damn you to hell!
hylianchriss Hahaha yup I'm in the same situation..work is Mac, home is PC and I had 2TB to copy so I just waited since I wasn't really in a hurry. If you have an e-SATA connection with your drive it can do it in 4-5 hours, at least that's how long it took me. But there's really no other way around it…Mac and PC are just never going to communicate well and that's a fact :( Those of us who like both just have to suffer!
Michelle L I cant do that, I have an inter compatible external drive that works on both Macs and PCs, recently I used a Mac and when I came back a day later suddenly it picks a fight with Adobe After Effects saying that the disk is "locked" even though it was fine literally the day before. I'm so confused, I have an assignment due for class Monday and I feel totally screwed.
benzlover55 What I did when I was in school was just work on the school computers, even over the weekend. We had Mac laptops but takes FOREVER to render stuff on those especially Premiere/AE stuff. It sucked not being able to work from home but stuff gets done faster there, than trying to screw with hard drive compatibility/render times.
after searching high and low for a solution to my external hard drive, this is the ONLY tutorial that explained just what I needed! thank you so so much!
any way to do this without formatting the disk?
my files have the total of 800 gigabytes, it will take lot of time
As of January 2021 with the current Mac OS, this tutorial is still relevant today. Thank you!
Thanks man from me in 2023
You sir deserve every bit of ad revenue this video brings your direction. I should've known to go this route, but I needed some reassurance. Simple solution. Great tutorial. Appreciate it!
Thank you! You saved the day!
@@trubenstudios4063 His solution solved my problem. Sorry it didn't solve yours.
@@trubenstudios4063 Well damn, I guess I owe you a huge thank you for educating me ( despite the fact that his advice fixed my problem). So, I guess the big question now is, will you be educating the several hundred other commentators who expressed thanks for him helping them too....or will I be the sole, extremely lucky individual to receive your sweet, loving attention? Looks like you have a long day ahead of you....
After several days of frustration, several articles and You Tube videos, I came across this video; he nailed the problem and the solution. What a relief. You know what you are doing. Go to the head of the class!
This was exactly what I needed! Ah! Thank you so much, perfectly clear explanation! =D
perfectly explained!
Thank you so much!! 6 years later and the information still essentially worked (Mac OS version is updated and the Erase column detail has changed some) but you saved the day!
This was exactly what was looking for and was explained prefectly.
Best video ever, my boss bought me an external hard drive so I can move my files there for the computer to work faster. Now I was seated with a hard drive that does not want to accept my files, luckily I found this professional. Thanks a lot :-)
My Sandisk Usb can only read and if i try to erase, it says "Erase process has failed. click done to continue".
Mine does the same thing. Now what??
@@Bridgetmcwho exactly
@@Bridgetmcwho I swear. I've behind this for months on end and no solution works
Thank you so much.The reason why this man explained the problem before he gave the solutions is so that we do not keep on looking for a solution that does not exist.If he had said the solution is to format the HDD , most of us would have found the answer insufficient and kept searching for an alternative way.I do not understand people that complained and said he was supposed to be straight to the point ,the video is just 4 minutes long.
I've been using my external drives for so long and my mac use to read them, i just upgrade to el capitan with a clean install and now it won't let me modify one of the drives and the other one won't read. so in my case i don't think the solution should be to format the drives, since they worked before in my mac.
+Jose Bap same here. even when I tried this, my drive won't unmount. :(
+Jose Bap Same..
Sydney Bennett VGMusic Covers I've solved the problem i had with one of the Hard Drives, this one I solved by Installing an app (Tuxera NTFS for Mac)that came with my Toshiba External Hard Drive (i totally forgotten about that app), that app basically lets you read and write NTFS partitions) the other hard drive I had to format, cause apparently when i first tried to make the USB Installer of OS X the app (DiskMaker X 5) selected The External Drive and formatted it. so i lost my music and movies (some i recovered using (recuva for windows). i really hope that helps if any of this happens to someone else or if you still have the problem and haven't formatted the HDD.
Well, I got the trial of Paragon NTFS 14 for my Seagate and it works. The problem is that I don't want to pay for that upgrade, since I have the old NTFS 12 for it. Whatever, I can deal with it.
VGMusic Covers i uploaded my version of taxera for mac. let me know if you can download it and if it works for you.
www.dropbox.com/sh/0sa86kro55hr1br/AABIDun_LdFhc4XwGFlcmnh-a?dl=0
6 years later and this video helped me so much in 2022 thank you
when i click erase, it says "Volume Erase failed with the error: Couldn’t unmount disk." what can i do
same here
@@Delovski I had the same message, turns out I didn't have enough storage space to unmount it
Varya Pavlova No it's not that. You need to format it to special codec that's read/write on both mac or windows
@@Delovski how tho?
@@aveerajuss8487 i did it on windows
This saved me SO MUCH TIME. Was on an NTFS goose chase and this fixed my external drive storage issue in 2 minutes. Thank you so much!
What do you do if the erase button is grayed out. I was downloading a large file to my Gorilla Drive and it unmounted and now i can't repair or erase. I tried on a PC to and it says permissions error. Any thoughts on how to solve this one. Is there a force format on a Mac?
bump
its 2022 and this was the easiest and simplest video and answer I could find. Thank you!
My erase button is grayed out. The volume format is as well, but it says it is MS-DOS (FAT). WHen I clicked on Get Info, it says it is read only. How can I fix this?
same problem here ? someone help
same problem, why these guys want us to spend more money for that!
EASY AS HELL , I just found out the solution by myself while i was looking for the answer. 1 > Connect your drive , 2 > Go to time machine , 3 > Turn Time Machine On for the drive that you're having problem with , 4 > The Time Machine will automatically format the Hard Drive into MacOS extended and all the restrictions will be gone with the process , 5 > Now you have the drive that you can do whatever you want and turn back off the Time Machine if u wish !!! ENJOY :D :D :D
Aung Myat Paing Tried this one out, but without any luck. It says, it wasn't able to open the flash drive. Any idea?
Tom Djurhuus Iburg same problem here... pretty frustrating
After 10 years this video was very helpful, after 1 day of confusion finally solved with this
Thank you!!!!! for posting this Video.
thanks a lot for this! came from a tutorial that told me to use the "csrutil disable" command on terminal, but with no such luck. glad this fixed the issue for me.
Are you kidding me? Title is a bit misleading...I thought this was a quick tip to solve the problem, not erase the drive with date on it! I knew how to do that....!
+Skopelos hahahahahahaha same
Exactly.
Life saver, a day before I have to turn in a paper and I run into this problem. Thank you for posting this video, it was very helpful!!
this solution is not a viable option for me.. you see i use a 3TB external hardrive which works on every other operating system in the world except this. now copying over 3TB of stuff is impossible as my laptop containts a 3x128gb SSD's in raid and 1Tb internal hardrive. i have about over 2TB of information on the external.
really pissed off right now.
Dark Exsphere just use your friends' or parents' pc or something, thats what i did :)
i just got rid of the macbook instead haha
Dark Exsphere lol thats one solution :D but you do know that theres a couple oD peograms that let your mac read ntfs files :p it goes a little bit slower but it works. but whatever you like the most :p what did u buy?
MSi GT70 Dragon Edition 2. came with windows 8. recently updated to 10
Many thanks!!! And here I thought it was going to be as simple as Plug & Play!!! Clear & Concise. Your video was so helpful!!! This is one very thankful subscriber!!!
Thanks - we just had the problem yesterday - thanks for the solution.
you are an excellent teacher very clear concise information and not a lot of fluff...awesome thanks
All I did was update my mac to OS Sierra and this what happens? Now I have to reformat a 3TB hard drive? Apple is becoming a joke now wtf... Apple please note that either you get with the future or be left behind. You are losing your touch and I am becoming less of a fan as the days go by!!!!!! Apple you do nothing but make my life more difficult than it has to be! I am very very upset!!!!!
Working for a school district that is half Mac and half Windows this is a GREAT solution. I am the only one in the district that has a drive that can go from Windows to Mac and it has been a life saver! But not being able to save and back-up my files is nerve racking. Thank you for doing the full explanation. I am the type of person that likes to know the how and why's...
**The only question I have is: Is there a way to do the format on a Windows machine instead of a Mac?
this video is very helpful but could have been like 2 minutes shorter :D
This helped me a whole 8 years later after the video was posted thanks.
OMG! Thank you for posting this video!
Life saver! HUGE THUMBS UP!!! + new subscriber!
Thank you. You saved my life.
-___- I was hoping I wouldn't have to format, oh well...
You're the man man! I was thinking I couldn't edit because of the usb-c adapter, I figured formatting was an issue but I didn't know how to fix this, great fix mate thanks!
This literally saved me! Thank you so much!
I've seen so many videos but this is the best one so far and it actually worked, thank you so much!
what do i do if it wont give me the option to erase?
In 2023 and this video just unravelled the puzzle of my external hard drive.
I've got a different problem. My external drive's in MS-Dos Format and i didn't get the option to erase. What do i do in that case?
me too
Like problem. I just disposed that hard drive and bought a new one. #Helpless
Format in windows?
Thanks!! This helped me out a bunch. It's still a little nerve racking to back up your files to one drive and delete from another to reformat....
This one is lame and the most stupid suggestion ever. I have TB's of data on my storage device and my mac has barely 500GB. This is not even a workaround in the situation.
I used the steps below and it worked on Yosemite too (The drive will not pop on the desktop but it shows in finder in my home folder and is writeable
a) open the terminal (or iTerm, or whatever) and type: mount
They will show a list with all the devices in your computer. Last things last, if you just plugged your hard drive, it will be the last line. In case not, just look by the name of your HDD.
b) Copy the /dev/diskXXsY related with your hard drive (in my case, /dev/disk24s1)
c) type: sudo umount /Volumes/HARDDRIVENAME (whatever is the name of your HDD. You can press tab to autocomplete, once spaces are covered with backlashes)
d) type: mkdir ntfs
e) type: sudo mount -o rw,auto,nobrowse -t ntfs /dev/disk24s1 ntfs (again, disk24s1 was my case, the step b will show you the route of your HDD
(Credits joaprp on learnaholic for the original post)
Thank you! Worked like a charm. I hate reformatting my drives. :(
Thank you!! I have had an external hard drive sitting wasting away with another 450 some gb left to use. I don't know why it took me this long to look up if theres a solution. You have saved me!
Thank you thank you for saving me a giant headache !
Much appreciated. I contacted On1 Photo Raw, and they included this tutorial to me, which did solve my problem. I thank you and them for helping me to overcome the problem I had with one of the SD cards. Thanks a lot...
THANK YOU FOR THIS! Straight to the point lol
this video is really helpful he clearly show the way we can read and write external hdd or sdd on MacBook thanks man for giving us correct information
EASY AS HELL , for the ppl who's format button is greyed out and having problems with permission issues !!! I just found out the solution by myself while i was looking for the answer. 1 > Connect your drive , 2 > Go to time machine , 3 > Turn Time Machine On for the drive that you're having problem with , 4 > The Time Machine will automatically format the Hard Drive into MacOS extended and all the restrictions will be gone with the process , 5 > Now you have the drive that you can do whatever you want and turn back off the Time Machine if u wish !!! Easy isn't ??? ENJOY :D :D :D
You are the best! The best informational video so far! My friend and I have watched so many videos to find this one and immediately solved our issue. Amen.
Not helping at all. I don't need your help to ERASE a drive!!! C'mon!!!
Thank you so much, you saved my life because I have so many family pictures that I had to save and couldn't do it until I follow your instructions, very easy and helpful.
what if you don't want to *format your drive
+Deena James You can DL NTFS-3G (or better, Paragon, but that costs 20 bucks)
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I bought a cheap HP PC to use for surfing the web and I wanted to have my external harddrive with all my itunes music off of 3 computers and I could not figure out how to get it to work forever until I found this. So freaking easy. Thanks!
This idiot's solution is only for a close to empty or new HD, unless you don't mind transferring data, waiting and formatting.
My Samsung external 2TB HD was more than half full, but I just found out that it has its default utilities pre-installed. Inside there was an NTFS driver just for this very problem. Installed it, restarted the mac and everything finally worked.
So check your external HD utilities, it might have this NTFS driver file for mac.
Thanks!! this worked!
Did you really find it necessary to call this person an idiot? I would add - I find it necessary to call YOU an idiot for being so vicious.
I wish you the best - by all means, continue to be a RABID PSYCHOPATH. And I am quite glad that you 'almost' wiped your whole drive. Now go wipe your ass - with your fingers.
Organman the 52 year old sensationalist youtube comment dropping man smh kick rocks you old fart and suck it easy.
Can anyone give me a hand with how to do this? Really don't want to have to reformat my external HD
The best explanation so far. Now I need to find info on the diff between exFAT and FAT32.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. I searched high & low for this resolution. I'm a new Mac user & this was clear & precise.
thank you! i originally had this problem months ago so i bought another external hard drive and just moved everything over to that one. Now with the mac OS el capitan update, it changed the format back over to NTFS again. Now that I know what the problem is, I can simply erase the first hard drive, move my documents from the new to the old, erase the new, and then move my documents back. THANK YOU!!!
Thank you so much! I just spent an hour on google and various websites that couldn't solve this problem for me and you did it in 4 mins! thank you so much!
Thank you for taking your time in making this video. I had a horrible time with this issue for the past 9 months. THANKS!
I've been trying to figure this out for months, and you're video was awesome. Thank you!
This was a life saver. im switching from mac to pc and the 1tb hard drive i got to transfer important files from one computer to the next would not let me write on it. i spent nearly 100 bucks on the damn thing, and i was on the verge of yeeting it out the window in frustration.
Thanks so much! Now I have a way to "fix" all my external hard drives so I can move data back and forth easily! By the way, I really like the way you explain every detail so those of us that are not expert in computers can understand it all completely!
2023 and this video is still helping people!!
Thank you so much. I couldn't find a video teaching me how nad yours from 8 years ago works perfect
OMG I THOUGHT MY HARD DRIVE WAS BROKE AND ORDERED ANOTHER ONE
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO !!!!!
WOW. This is EXACTLY what I needed to know. Thank you for the clear tutorial. It worked PERFECTLY with no headaches or effort on my part. :)
Thank you for your help. I’m so grateful for smart people like yourself.
i was in a harry like point me to the fix! but i stayed for the whole 4:46 min as if it was a life lesson, and it was!!
thanks and appreciated. new SUB HERE
Thank you for not only solving my problem but also for educating me on this. Awesome.
This was my first visit. You are very good. My problem has been solved. Thank You.
I have tried 3 ways to solve this without having to delete (format) stuffs
So the problem is your external drive is formatted in NTFS (read and write for window but read-only for mac). Mac works with APFS
1. Use external program to read NTFS on Mac (for example, Partion Magic with Partion Magic)
2. Window Bootcamp your mac, open window bootcamp, then copy from the external drive to bootcamp. Then go back to Mac then copy from bootcamp to mac. After that you can reformat
3. Upload to cloud (the method everybody know)
After you backup your hard drive, reformat it to ExFat format using Disk Ultility. This will enable your hard drive to work with both Mac and Window.
Problem solved!
Thanks you saved me a lot of time searching for a solution.
Thanks man, this is great. It is one of the only tutorials that have told me exactly what I wanted and needed to know!
You have a good day sir.
An Exceptional Tutorial. Saved me a lot of Time. I was almost giving up on Mac
WOW Thank You sooooo much!!! It worked and in less than 5 minutes. I am so grateful you took the time to share this information.
Thank you so much!!!
P.S. A video from 9 years ago still works now!!
Thanks for the quick instructional video. Short, informative and to the point. Helped me out!
Watching this in 2023.
Still helpful. Thanks.
Thank you so much!! This definitely helped me 10 years Later!!
This video was very helpful and now my hard drive works properly!! Thank you
SO MUCH HELP! Thank you so much, Tuts+ Computer skills! I can really tell you truly know allot about Mac/PC compatibility.
Thank you for this video. You have shared the knowledge in the most simplest and clear way.
Thank you so much for this video. I orginally had an external drive on my laptop windows pc. haven't used it since I got my macbook air, but now that I need to it would not let me delete or copy files to it. your video helped me to solve the issue and my $80 investment is no longer just a paper weight. Thanks again.
Very Useful & helpful as at 5years now. Thanks
You just saved my life and hours to do it all over again, cheers