Quick Tip: Solving "Read Only" External Drive Problems on Your Mac
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 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.
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.
10 years later this video is still helpful.
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.
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.
This helped me a whole 8 years later after the video was posted thanks.
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!
Thanks man from me in 2023
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
In 2023 and this video just unravelled the puzzle of my external hard drive.
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 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!
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 your help. I’m so grateful for smart people like yourself.
Thank you for taking your time in making this video. I had a horrible time with this issue for the past 9 months. THANKS!
You wasted 90% of the time telling me stuff I didn't need to know, I was nearly screaming until you FINALLY got to what to do. Jesus.
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
Very Useful & helpful as at 5years now. Thanks
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.
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. :)
Thankyou! I am fairly computer illiterate and just bought a new hard drive which needed this done before I could use it, super helpful and easy to follow :)
Thank you for taking the time to share this solution.
great tutorial, amazing explanation! thank you, at 2021 this is still very useful
-___- I was hoping I wouldn't have to format, oh well...
2024 and this video is still relevant
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.
THANK YOU SO MUCH, THIS HAS JUST SAVED MY LIFE!
The video is very straight forward, simple and helpful. Solved my hard drive problem on the spot! Thank you!
Excellent tutorial!! I wish they were all this clear and simple and perfectly paced. Thank you!
This literally saved me! Thank you so much!
its 2021 but thank you sir this video save my life
Thank you so. much. I almost when out to buy a new one. which is not so fantastic on a student budget! You're video was appreciated!
Thank you very much for this advice Robert. You have explained this in a clear and precise manner.
this video is very helpful but could have been like 2 minutes shorter :D
Great tip ! Thanks for solving my problem in 4 minutes :) I had guessed what the problem was but didn't know how to solve it :) Thanks
Thanks, I was struggling with issue now you have showed me the easy fix.
Thanks man, not being able to delete files from my hd was driving me insane
So helpful. Thank you for the clear instructions :)
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. :(
So easy, very helpful.
Great work!
Thank you. You saved my life.
Hi, I need to do this process for me to use my 1tb seagate on my Mbpro retina 13" with ONLY 256 SSD. Problem is, I already used 950gb on the external HDD and I don't know how I can back it up because I don't have any other computers. Great video by the way! Keep it up! Also, can you post a tutorial for bootcamp?
Thank you sir this really helped and i feel like a tech guy now
Thanks for the video, boss. It seems trivial now that I see what was going on, but damn this problem gave me a hell of a headache.
This only happened to me when I upgraded to El capitan. Really helpful still
thank you it's useful!!
real part starts at 2:51
couldn't do it both windows and mac so I just used one of the mac options and it worked
Excellent video, solved my problem immediately.
GREAT HELP!!! AND TODAY IS OCT 17, 2021... WORKS GREAT =)
Great tutorial. It easily solved my problem.
Thank you very much! Super helpful and very explanatory!
Worked for me! Thanks! Took forever to copy but it worked!
very cool video. helpful for new Mac users like me. thanks!
thank you for the effort Robert, my question is do i have to erase the drive? Can't i just change format without erasing the drive ?
Thank you. Solved a problem very clearly.
Robert Thanks, really appreciate the way you explain. .
The solution is to change the permissions without wiping out the drive. Open a unix prompt. Cd to the drive, which appears as a file link and chmod 777 to it. You are welcome.
Wow. Way to SOLVE it. Pleas add BY FORMATTING in title so not to waste peoples time that think you have a fix that doesn't include formatting.
Great information and well presented.
thank you too much! I was very frustrated and this def did the trick
Thank you so much for this. What an incredible help.
One love.
Brilliant tutorial well explained and worked perfectly. Thanks
Awesome! Finally i can copy files from mac to my hard drive. Thanks! :)
Time Consuming. Each time there is an update we will have to format our hard drives.
Thank you! That was so easy to follow, and a success!
5 minutes of talk to tell that we need to format, great content!
Excellent tutorial! Thanks you. You described PERFECTLY! my problem solve! Whoa! THANK YOU for making and sharing this video! :)
also applies to a network shared disk from another PC? I have the same problem
Thank you! It still works as of today!🥳
Wow! Worked like a charm. Thank you.
AMAZIN!! solved our problem straight away! thanks so much!!!
So does it mean I’m still able to move and add files as long as it’s done on a windows computer?
Great video. Wealth of knowledge.
this was a major help for me
i have about 500gb on my hard disk and my mac air only has 256gb ssd. how do i format that without losing any data?
+Rahul Kapoor buy another one ... lol
same problem here..
+Rahul Kapoor install windows on ur Mac.
id rather get raped.
+Rahul Kapoor have you found out a way?? I'm searching for a solution to this too
+1MtD1 Nope, niece bought a new HDD, will use it to transfer data and format my own HDD and get the data back.
Great video very clear, it worked for me thank you
very useful video and well explained/clear! well done and thanks for the help x
Very helpful thank you for the video it fixed my problem
So helpful! Thanks for making this video!
Very well explain. Thank you
which part is the quick tip ?
nice and useful explanation, thank u.
Thank you,worked like a charm
Thanks, that was really helpful.
For those who don't want to format their drive. I found an article showing how to mount an NTFS formatted volume in read-write mode. www.mikeivanov.com/post/45894951347/how-to-mount-an-ntfs-formatted-usb-drive-in
Thanks, I found this very helpful :)
omg i've struggling with this for years and it was that simple aaarrghh!!! thanks tho^^
Thanks this helped a lot. Well done
Thanks for solving my problem but could have cut at least half the video out.
You saved my day! Thank you.
OMG. I thought its the end of my files already!!!
Thank you oh so much for this very helpful video.
KUDOS!
Mine is in apfs but is only readable can I get write permissions without havin to reformat?
what about the speed? is any difference with different format?
Extremely Helpful! Thank you!
Very helpful! Thank you!
This method is not working with my usb. Whenever i am erasing the usb i always get an error "couldn't open device" .
For me it does not say You can only read, the 'privilege' also says read & write, but similarly when i try to drag from mac onto drive it bounces away and rejects it
Not useful for me. Mine is already formatted Mac OS Extended and I still get this error.
What do I do if the erasing process has failed? I re-tried with each format..
Just saved my life! Thanks
Thank you, very helpful, and easy.