Unable to write to remote drive?

[hempomatic]

The title of the thread may be slightly misleading because it's actually a drive salvaged from a defective computer that had a main board failure. It's a 2 TB internal SSD that I'm currently using as external storage via a connector to the drive terminating in USB2 at the computer. My problem is, I can read it fine, I can drag files from it fine, I can run apps on my current computer to play music files from it, etc, however, I can't write to it.

I hooked it up and checked it with Disk Utility, and it shows well over 1 TB unused. It is formatted in APFS. I see it listed on Finder. It has a ton of data on it I don't want to lose, so formatting the drive is not an option. I'm currently using it as a back up drive for some of my music.

Is there any way I can perhaps make another partition on the unused space without losing the data that's on there. The OS that was on the computer this was culled from was Catalina.

 

[Jimmysb]

You could try copying the information somewhere else temporally, re-format then copy back, a bit of a faff, but I found it was my only solution to manage a salvaged drive.

 

[hempomatic]

Well Jim, that's certainly an alternative I'm considering, but the only spare drives I have with enough space are being used as back up drives. Nothing else has enough physical space for more than 1/2 TB of data. It looks like yet another remote drive is in my future.

 

[krs]

My problem is, I can read it fine, I can drag files from it fine, I can run apps on my current computer to play music files from it, etc, however, I can't write to it.

Have you figured out why you can't write to it?
What actually happens when you try that?
Do you get any messages?

 

[MacInWin]

Right click on it, then Get Info. See if you have write authority to the drive. If not, click the padlock and provide an admin password and change your authority.

 

[hempomatic]

Have you figured out why you can't write to it?
What actually happens when you try that?
Do you get any messages?

I have not
There is a white circle with a line through it
No messages

Right click on it, then Get Info. See if you have write authority to the drive. If not, click the padlock and provide an admin password and change your authority.

That was the first thing I tried. I opened the pad lock, but when I go to change it from read only to read and write, I get a message window saying I "don't have the necessary permission". If I don't, who does?

 

[IWT]

There is a white circle with a line through it

As this Drive is "a drive salvaged from a defective computer that had a main board failure", the white circle with a line through could mean that your disk contains a Mac operating system, but it's not a macOS that your Mac can use.

See here: If your Mac starts up to a circle with a line through it

Not sure how you can circumnavigate that problem. Others may have an idea

Ian

 

[hempomatic]

As this Drive is "a drive salvaged from a defective computer that had a main board failure", the white circle with a line through could mean that your disk contains a Mac operating system, but it's not a macOS that your Mac can use.

See here: If your Mac starts up to a circle with a line through it

Not sure how you can circumnavigate that problem. Others may have an idea

Ian

Interesting, I hadn't thought of that. The OS that was on that computer if I recall was Mojave, however, it's possible that it was Catalina. It is formatted in HPFS. I'm not trying to boot to it however and I can read all of the files. It SEEMS to be a permission issue.

 

[krs]

I don't think having a macOS on the external drive would create that issue.
@hempomatic -
1. Did that drive come from a Mac where you were the administrator?
2. Do you have access to another Mac to see if you can write to the drive using that Mac

 

[jpdemers]

You can use Disk Utility to add a volume to the disk, without losing any of the data. Whether you can write to it (or whether you can add a volume in the first place) probably depends on what the problem is.
I'd consider paying for cloud backup (iCloud, Dropbox, etc.) just to make it possible to try a re-format. Takes hours to copy out a TB of stuff, but you can let it go overnight. (Consider doing this anyhow: keeping data you "don't want to lose" on a flaky drive is rather foolhardy.)
Bad hardware (a fault in the SSD itself) can't be overcome; you may not even be able to re-format the drive.

 

[jpdemers]

Note that a year of cloud storage costs the same as a 2TB drive - you might want to just bite the bullet and buy the thing.

 

[MacInWin]

It is formatted in HPFS.

Can you elaborate? Did you mean APFS or HFS+? If you meant APFS, can you use Disk Utility, select "See all Devices" under the view option and post a screenshot. I suspect that you may be trying to write to a Volume on that disk that you don't have authority to write, and which you cannot change to be writable. Its name would be Macintosh HD, unless you changed the name for some reason, and would contain the operating system. The Volume named "Macintosh HD - Data" you should be able to write to because that is the Volume for user data.

But post the image and we can see what you have going on better.

 

[hempomatic]

I don't think having a macOS on the external drive would create that issue.
@hempomatic -
1. Did that drive come from a Mac where you were the administrator?
2. Do you have access to another Mac to see if you can write to the drive using that Mac

1.) Yes it did
2.) I do not

You can use Disk Utility to add a volume to the disk, without losing any of the data. Whether you can write to it (or whether you can add a volume in the first place) probably depends on what the problem is.
I'd consider paying for cloud backup (iCloud, Dropbox, etc.) just to make it possible to try a re-format. Takes hours to copy out a TB of stuff, but you can let it go overnight. (Consider doing this anyhow: keeping data you "don't want to lose" on a flaky drive is rather foolhardy.)
Bad hardware (a fault in the SSD itself) can't be overcome; you may not even be able to re-format the drive.

I'll try to add a volume to the disk. When I click on "partition" in disk utility I have to option of adding a volume, or a partition. What's the difference and which is preferred if I simply want to use it as a remote back up drive and be able to write data to it? I don't think the drive is flaky. It's virtually new. I installed it in a computer that was acting up, but everyone thought the problem was a faulty drive, but it ended up being the motherboard and not the drive, so the drive itself is hardly used. Not being able to write to it seems to be a permissions issue, and not a bad drive.

 

[hempomatic]

Note that a year of cloud storage costs the same as a 2TB drive - you might want to just bite the bullet and buy the thing.

There are several reasons I never use cloud storage for anything. I don't trust it for one, but in addition, I'm in the mountains of western North Carolina and data throughput is horrible, barely DSL speed. I'm supposed to have 300 MBS, but the reality is 1 to 5 MBS. It can take an hour to download a couple of emails. It would take months to upload and then download a terabyte of data. I may simply buy a 1TB spinning drive from Walmart ( my only local source for computer parts LOL )

 

[hempomatic]

Can you elaborate? Did you mean APFS or HFS+? If you meant APFS, can you use Disk Utility, select "See all Devices" under the view option and post a screenshot. I suspect that you may be trying to write to a Volume on that disk that you don't have authority to write, and which you cannot change to be writable. Its name would be Macintosh HD, unless you changed the name for some reason, and would contain the operating system. The Volume named "Macintosh HD - Data" you should be able to write to because that is the Volume for user data.

But post the image and we can see what you have going on better.

The disk I want to write to is "Bob". I have about 500 gig I want to write to it. I don't understand why I don't have permission. Since I don't have permission to write to it, do I assume I can't add a volume or a partition either? And if I add a portion or volume, will I then be able to write to that part of the drive?

 

[MacInWin]

I'll try to add a volume to the disk. When I click on "partition" in disk utility I have to option of adding a volume, or a partition. What's the difference and which is preferred if I simply want to use it as a remote back up drive and be able to write data to it?

Don't do that. Don't partition. That divides the hardware up and basically could erase the entire drive in the process.

From your image, "Bob" is the system drive, as I suspected. You cannot write to "Bob" because it is owned by the system and NO user has access to it. But, "Bob - Data" is also part of that drive and you CAN write to it. Not only that, but the space that you think Bob has is also available to Bob-Data. How that works is that "Container Disk3" has the entire drive (hardware) available, then within that Container are two Volumes, as Apple calls them, "Bob" and "Bob-Data." As I said, Bob has the system and is very strongly write protected. The good news is that "Bob" is relatively small and doesn't consume a ton of space. "Bob-Data" is another Volume, and it holds the /User folder in which your own account space was when it was a boot drive. That Volume is read/write, and there should be a folder on it for your account when it was boot, which you may be able to write to. The way APFS works is that all the volumes in a container have access to all the space in the container that is free, so both Bob and Bob-Data have access, as I said, to the free space on the drive.

Now, if you never plan to boot from that drive, ever, you can try to remove the volume named "Bob" by selecting it and then click on the "-" on the bar where it says "Volume." I don't know if that will work, and it won't save you much space, but if it does, "Bob" will disappear and only "Bob-Data" will remain.

BTW, one of the "smarts" of the OS is that when you boot from that drive, the system will mount what you have highlighted, namely, "Bob volumes," both Bob and Bob-data get mounted, then merged into one virtual drive named "Bob." On that virtual drive, you can write to /Users, but not the other root folders because they are the system files stored on Bob, while /Users is stored on Bob-data.

Hope that helped. To summarize, just use Bob-Data instead of Bob and you should be able to write to the drive.

 

[hempomatic]

Don't do that. Don't partition. That divides the hardware up and basically could erase the entire drive in the process.

Hope that helped. To summarize, just use Bob-Data instead of Bob and you should be able to write to the drive.

How? Bob-Data doesn't appear anywhere other than Disk Utility. Normally, if I want to do something like that, I drag it from wherever to a listed drive in finder. If I click on Bob, all the files are listed, but Bob-Data doesn't appear anywhere

 

[krs]

At this point I would just buy a 2 TB external spinner drive rather than 'fiddling' more with the 2 TB SSD and risking losing data already on that SSD or possibly corrupting it.
Then transfer the data from the SSD to the spinner and reformat the SSD.
Besides Walmart, is Amazon an option? That's where I buy my 2 TB spinners.

 

[MacInWin]

OK, if you open Bob and go to the root of the drive, there should be four folders: /System, /Library, /Users, and /Applications. Like this:


My drive is named "Macintosh HD" where your's is Bob, but you should see these four. Then in Users is where you can write. Not to any of the others and not to the root of Bob, but to /Users. And in Users should be your account name when that was the boot drive, along with any other users you created. That area is read/write.

What is happening, I think, is that the OS is smart enough to recognize that the drive is a boot drive and is merging "Bob" and "Bob-Data" into one icon, named "Bob" for you. But you cannot write directly to "Bob," you have to be in "Bob/Users" where your account is. You might even need to navigate to /Users/<<yourname>> to be able to write.

 

[MacInWin]

At this point I would just buy a 2 TB external spinner drive rather than 'fiddling' more with the 2 TB SSD and risking losing data already on that SSD or possibly corrupting it.
Then transfer the data from the SSD to the spinner and reformat the SSD.
Besides Walmart, is Amazon an option? That's where I buy my 2 TB spinners.

That would work, but then he would need to reformat the Bob drive to gain access to it. But there is a free solution, as I have given in my post above this one.