External HD read only?

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I hooked up our "My Passport" that we use solely as an external HD and it comes up as read only. I can't save anything to it and when I check get-info it says shared as read only.
 

RavingMac

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I hooked up our "My Passport" that we use solely as an external HD and it comes up as read only. I can't save anything to it and when I check get-info it says shared as read only.

Was this HD originally formatted on a Windows PC? If so, it is almost certainly formatted to NTFS, which your Mac can read, but not write to without 3rd party software.

EDIT: Your wording has me wondering a bit about your hookup. You mention it as a shared drive, do you mean off of your router? Regardless, if it isn't a format issue, login to a user account with admin privileges, go to System Preferences>Sharing and select the drive, click on the lock to allow changes and reset the permissions.
 
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RavingMac

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Sorry -no it is isn't shared -it is just under "sharing and permissions" on the Get Info Screen it says read only.

Yes it was formatted by a PC for use from PC to PC but now we need to have files from PC to Mac. (work to home)

This sums up my issue completely
My new external Mac drive is read-only. How can I fix it? :: Online Tech Support Help :: Ask Dave Taylor!®

He recommends a reformat - my question of course is will it it be read-write accessible by the PC (work computer)?

The answer is yes, if you reformat to FAT32, then it will be read/write ascessible by your work PC and your Mac, you will have a 4Gb file size limitation (which may or may not matter).
The other choice is to leave it as NTFS format and download 3rd party package for your Mac (Paragon is one source) which will allow your Mac to write to the drive. I don't have a reccomendation on that, as my old external drive is FAT32 and works well (even though I no longer have any Windows PCs in the house).

I believe there are 3rd party packages to allow your Windows PC to read/write Mac OS format (HFS) but I am not familiar with any of them. Preferable, in my opinion, to either format drive to FAT32 or get an NTFS driver for your Mac.
 

dtravis7


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I believe there are 3rd party packages to allow your Windows PC to read/write Mac OS format (HFS) but I am not familiar with any of them. Preferable, in my opinion, to either format drive to FAT32 or get an NTFS driver for your Mac.

That is called Mac Drive. Works great.

I do agree it's easier to just format the external in FAT32 but there is one thing I should mention. If any SINGLE file is over 4GB, it won't write to FAT32. Few files are that large, but warning you just in case.
 
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Awesome. Thanks for the info!! I'll try the FAT32 since the hubby can't install any software on his work computer. I don't think the 4GB file size will be a problem.
Thanks muchly!
 

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