Fat32 External Hard Drive is read-only?

Hey, I recently moved from PC to Mac and plugged my 1.5Tb hard drive packed full of movies and music into my new iMac.

Everything plays great, but first I noticed it would not let me add artwork to any music. Then I realised I couldn't even save pictures onto it.

A quick 'Get Info' reveals my entire external hard-drive is 'read only' and there is no option to select otherwise. I checked disc utility and it will not let me repair permission either.

Just to clarify, this was formatted in Windows to Fat32; I am well aware that NTFS is read-only - but this Fat32 hard drive should work fine!

Last resort will be copying all my data onto other hard-drives and reformatting in a Mac format; but I'd rather get this working if possible..

Thanks!

Its probably a permissions issue then, you can alter a disk permissions through the get info dialogue box

How? I go to permissions, it says 'read only' and there is nothing I can click or change.

I didn't think you could have a FAT32 partition larger than 32gb? So do you have multiple partitions on the 1.5TB disk? If not, you either are really formatted using NTFS or some proprietary weird FAT32 scheme that wouldn't be compatible with a Mac.

What does Disk Utility say that drive is formatted as?

You can have Fat32 of any size; it's just that Windows refuses to let you do it with their program. There are plenty of programs that make big Fat32 drives all over the internet.

It's one partition and disc utility says the format is MS-DOS (Fat32)

You may need to "unlock" the permission settings by clicking the lock in the bottom corner.

Guess what, no lock!

Any more ideas chaps? I'm going to have to reformat at this rate!

Are you sure that drive wasn't formatted as "exFAT" rather than FAT-32? I can't imagine formatting a drive that large to FAT-32. There would be a tremendous amount of cluster waste and slack on a drive that large.

Typically, manufacturers format large drives to NTFS to avoid cluster waste, but lately some are using the "exFAT" system. See this LINK.

And a note: Disk Utility would "see" an exFAT partition or drive as MS-DOS but would refuse to access it because it doesn't know how.

It definitely said MS-DOS FAT 32!

One of the first things I did when I got my MacBook was format a 120 gig external to fat32 with Mac osx. Oh man it was nice because of what schweb was saying the limitation of a 32 gig partion without a program in windows. Why did I want fat32 you ask? I use it with my ps3 or my xbox360 and they can't read ntfs which is what a external is usually formatted to. The biggest problem are stuff getting all jumbled up as well as not being able to put a single file bigger than 4gig on it. Every external I have is fat32 and I have many. Too many

Do u still have your old computer?if so I would change the permissions on that. If not how much space are u using? If u have a ps3 or something of that nature I would transfer to that then reformat with your Mac then transfer the data back.

Use Windows to repair permissions.

Maybe look up the program which formatted it.

If nothing else. Borrow an empty external hard drive from a friend which is at least as big. Use a more standard format, Even if you have to create a scad of standard M$ FAT 32 and use Windows to copy from the one you have (which OS X refuses to read) to the one from the friend. Use a small test at first.
If your Apple is new. Call Apple Care, you have days of free telephone. Maybe go to an Apple store and let them put your files over.

BTW: Apple care is like having a best friend who is a geek and has a lot of patience in working with you on whatever Apple issue you have.

And like someone else's tag line says: Hold onto the original install Disc's like grim death.

alexjholland said:

It definitely said MS-DOS FAT 32!

Click to expand...

It's one partition and disc utility says the format is MS-DOS (Fat32)

Click to expand...

No need to reply in that manner. We're trying to help you sort this out. If the drive is indeed formatted to FAT-32 then we need to understand why nothing has worked thus far.

Disk Utility does not know the difference between FAT-32 and exFAT as it will "see" both as MS-DOS formatted.

What does it say when you attach the drive to a Windows machine? Assuming you have one handy? You will need at least Vista SP 1 in order to determine if the drive is formatted to exFAT or FAT-32.

Solved! It seems the WD 'Smartware' software needs to be kept open. It appears as a CD on my desktop that I unmounted for the sake of it; keeping it open after I've booted means my external is read/write and I can put my artwork in iTunes!

I may convert to a Mac format anyway, as the entire reason it was in Fat32 was so I could plug it directly into my 360 or PS3 to stream. However my new Mac is so quiet, that I can turn the monitor off and stream across the network using 'Playback' anyway. Fat 32 limits file size and, apparently, wastes space too..

If I decide to go ahead with this reformat, I'll visit the Mac store perhaps to ask to use their storage.. I hope they like piracy!

Ps. I definitely wasn't being rude dude, chill out..

Many Thanks for all your help and time everyone!

Fat 32 limits file size and, apparently, wastes space too..

Click to expand...

Cluster slack and wasted space is the reason why large hard drives are routinely formatted as NTFS since it uses a consistent 4K cluster size. FAT-32 will default to 32K clusters for any drive over 32 GB which is very wasteful.

Ps. I definitely wasn't being rude dude, chill out..

Click to expand...

No one accused you of being rude otherwise you would have heard differently. Thanks for posting back.

usb stick now readOnly

alexjholland said:

Everything plays great, but first I noticed it would not let me add artwork to any music. Then I realised I couldn't even save pictures onto it.
A quick 'Get Info' reveals my entire external hard-drive is 'read only' and there is no option to select otherwise. I checked disc utility and it will not let me repair permission either.
Just to clarify, this was formatted in Windows to Fat32; I am well aware that NTFS is read-only - but this Fat32 hard drive should work fine!

Click to expand...

me too (using a 16GB usb stick); I could write to it for a couple months (nothing excessive), but then today is went mysteriously to read-only

SO, I plugged it into a windows machine, ran "diskpart", "select disk 1" (or "list disk" to be sure the disk number!), then "attributes disk clear readonly" (and "exit"), but nope, still a read only disk (whether using windows or mac)

in this state, you can't format it, or do some fun "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk4 count=1024" type thing; it's simply stuck with whatever you last wrote to it (but can probably be read from forever); so, I'm guessing my couple months old USB just crapped out like an old solid state that was well written to, which can happen to new stuff (i.e. the memory chip wore out, as is the fate of all of our solid state memory stuff, but more likely to happen years down the road). this was a cheap freebie handed out as branding; no love lost

i.e. AlexJHolland: you're drive might be an SSD or hybrid (and ran into my same trouble)

The quality of the USB stick and the brand it's from is going to be a way of determining if it's going to fail on you randomly or not. As you've learned, something given away cheaply shouldn't be used to hold critical information since it might only last for a couple of months and who is to say how it was taken care off before you got it.

Anyway, this thread is 8 years old and the OP must have purchased many more SSDs since then, so this is likely not an active issue.