Imac will not write to external hard drive

[drmajor]

My 2019 Imac has been running OK ( little slow but ).

For some dumb reason, I played with the Permissions the other day and now the drive is READ ONLY.

I have gone into INFO for the drive and set it for READ/WRITE for me, Adamin, and System. Everyone is set for Read Only, and the heading now says APPLYING PRIVIVLAGES TO DRIVE X.

It is a large 5T drive w/ 180 GB of free space. It is not a Shared folder.

What do I need to do?

 

[ferrarr]

You need to wait for it to finish. It may take many days.

Or if this is only a backup drive, you can erase/wipe/format it now. If the files are not backed up, you will want to wait for it to finish.

 

[MacInWin]

And did you open the options in Get Info and select "Apply to enclosed items...?" If you did that, it's applying the permissions to EVERYTHING on the drive.

 

[drmajor]

Got it... Had to let the PERMISSION change run a long time.