User Permissions in El Capitan

I have to keep giving permission to move files around to my two different external back up drives. When I checked the permissions I realised that I was 'everyone' and not the 'owner'. How can this be? I am the only one who uses this computer and I have no guests authorised either. Am I missing something integral? Thanks, Iain

Iainy1 said:

I have to keep giving permission to move files around to my two different external back up drives. When I checked the permissions I realised that I was 'everyone' and not the 'owner'. How can this be? I am the only one who uses this computer and I have no guests authorised either. Am I missing something integral? Thanks, Iain

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Try setting the drives' privileges like so:

Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder and enter the following:

sudo chown rootdmin [enter a space after "admin"]

Drag the Desktop icon for the external drive into the Terminal window. Press RETURN. You will be prompted for your admin password, but it will not echo to the Terminal window. Press RETURN again.

Repeat for the second external drive.

Note that if there are ownership differences with files on each drive, then this will not fix the problem entirely. Each drive must have been used on different accounts. You cannot fix that unless you have duplicate accounts on the computers.

Much as I am nervous of the terminal I will try that. Thank you.