A really quick question

Hi everyone I have a really quick question I need answering.

I have some USB sticks that I need to make read only.

How do I do this on Mac?

Actually, this can be more difficult than you might think depending on how you want to use the stick.

What I'm about to describe appears only to work with OS X Extended (Journaled) formatted USB Sticks - at least in my experiments. If you intend to use the stick for Macs and PCs, then Fat32 or exFAT formats would be required and whilst they are easy to format on a Mac, I couldn't get the permissions changed to Read Only.

To start, mount USB Stick > Disk Utility > Select USB > Erase > Format OS X Extended (Journaled) and give the stick a name.

When completed, Right Click on the USB on your Desktop and from the Drop Down, elect Get Info.

At the very bottom on the right is a padlock. Click on it then enter your Admin PW to open it.

Again at the bottom, under permissions, you can change the read/write permissions like this:

You - Read/Write
Staff Read Only
Everyone Read only

Click padlock to close.

That should work now, allowing you read & write access and everyone else read only.

Give it a go on one USB stick & see if you get it to work. Please post back.

NB If you need FAT32 or exFAT, this doesn't seem to work and might need to be formatted on a PC.

Ian

That's not really true, as OS X can read NTFS formatted drives. But, if it is possible, they would need to create the USB drive using winOS.

That's not really true, as OS X can read NTFS formatted drives.

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You are correct, Bob; but I could not manage to format them on the Mac and change the permissions. My guess is that, as with FAT32 and exFAT, NTFS permission changes need to be done on a PC. Which is what you said too, I think.

So, JayJS can achieve what they want with a Mac provided the Format is OS X Extended (Journaled).

Ian

IWT said:

Which is what you said too, I think.

Click to expand...

Yes, that is what I tried to say. Thanks for clarifying it.