External harddrive went from 'read+write' to 'read only'...

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Have a 2 TB external harddrive running on my MacBook Pro for the last six months and just yesterday it went from 'read+write' to 'read only'...can't figure out why, and can't recall doing anything different...it says it's formatted (now) to NTFS, but I don't remember what it was before (MS-DOS (FAT32?))...can't add or delete anything, and in the 'get info' window there's no options at the bottom of the window other than 'you can only read'...wondering if there's something I can do without springing for another unit (and having to copy almost 2 TB of data)...thank you...
 
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A conversion to NTFS doesn't just happen without intervention. Have you only been using this on your Mac?

What I suspect has happened is that the drive has always been NTFS and a driver that was giving your write as well as read access to it has failed/been uninstalled.

I's suggest investing in Paragon NTFS. It'll give you read/write access to all NTFS drives.
 
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Thanks mrplow...yes, only on my Mac...I downloaded Paragon NTFS and my Mac went nuts...nothing would open, or close, the beach ball for twenty minutes, mouse and trackpad had no effect...finally I was able to uninstall it and regained use...although still some weird quirks here and there but mostly all right...still the same problem with the external though...as I said, used it everyday for more than six months with no problems, than pow...

Appreciate you taking the time to reply...thank you...
 
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I've used Paragon for a long time now, as have many others here. Never seen that kind of behaviour. Something else must be installed that's causing the issues.

Does Tuxera or NTFS-3G or Fuse ring any bells with you?
 
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They do, although the cost is prohibitive for me...

Might there be a way to check on the/a driver you speak of?...

Thank you again for taking the time to assist me...
 
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I'm sorry I don't really understand your reply.

However, go to System preferences and look along the bottom row. Do you have a Tuxera or Fuse icon?
 
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No, I apologize for not being clear enough...

No Tuxera or Fuse icons on the bottom row of System Preferences...looking at their websites I see that there are costs involved...unfortunately I have no way of purchasing over the internet...

Thank you again mrplow...
 
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Ok.

Let's start over. and check a few things:
1. Open Disk Utility. Run Repair Permissions on your Mac HD
2. Do you have any anti-virus software?
3. Where are you seeing that it's formatted as NTFS? Any chance of a screenshot?
 
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mrplow...no matter how this goes, I'm really appreciative of you taking the time to help...good man...

1. Ran repair permissions on HD...OK...

2. Use ClamXav...

3. Screenshot attached...actually I've got two externals that have the same problem...probably should have mentioned that earlier...

Thank you...

Screen Shot 2013-06-21 at 3.11.47 PM.png
 
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Sorry for all the questions but if you go into Disk Utility can you list all the formatting options you have on the erase tab?

Have you installed any other software recently?

Natively OSX can only read from NTFS drives (as you are seeing now). What I suspect has happened is that at some point you've installed an NTFS driver to give you write ability. Something has happened recently on your system that has removed or broken that facility.

The trouble, as you can see, is tracking down what's changed
 
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I can't say enough how appreciative I am...

Formatting options on the erase tab:

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
MS-DOS (FAT)
ExFat

Same for both externals...I saw these before but was/am paranoid of wiping all the data on the drives...probably seeing the word 'erase'...

I did download that Paragon program a couple of days ago but managed (I think) to uninstall all of it...that's the only software I've recently downloaded...I don't recall downloading any NTFS driver, as both harddrives worked fine (read/write) from the first time I plugged them in...

Part of the problem is I could probably go get another external harddrive and try to copy the data to it, but I live in rural Thailand and it's a major deal getting somewhere to get one...all the way to Bangkok is the best option, but like I say, a major deal...I'm a monk, and it would/is basically be a real breach of protocol me out shopping for hardware...but doable I guess, as no one has ever accused me of being big on it (protocol) anyway...

Thanks again...hopefully this helps...
 
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There are two options to enable NTFS write; install a driver or enable the 'hidden' OSX support.

**WARNING**
At your own risk.I can't vouch for either of these solutions. I've used them both both in the past but no longer do so. Please protect your data as a first step. If you're in any doubt about progressing, please don't and I'll rethink.

I'd normally suggest Paragon, as above, it's been rock solid on three of my Macs. However, you seemed to encounter issues so you can try another third party driver https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/wiki/NTFS-3G
or enable the OSX support for NTFS:


Snipped from another site to save the re-typing:

Edit /etc/fstab (you can do this with "sudo nano /etc/fstab" as Carlos suggested
Add the following line:
LABEL="THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_VOLUME" none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse
Quit your editor (if you used nano, you can do this with Control-X, Y, Enter as Carlos said)
Reboot, or if you prefer just unmount and re-mount the partition using Disk Utility


If you have Mountain Lion, the nobrowse mount option is required for this to work. This means that the partition will not show up on your desktop. However, you can access it normally through Finder by either:

Run Terminal and type "open /Volumes/THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_VOLUME" (without the quotes
In Finder, press Apple + the up arrow over and over until you see all of your mounted volumes. Your volume will be listed here.
 

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