Hard drive cant be modified?

[dave1234]

whenever i try to move something onto my hard drive, i get a little white circle with a bar running through it. And it saiz hard drive cant be modified? How do i get arounf this?

[maradong]

Originally posted by dave1234
whenever i try to move something onto my hard drive, i get a little white circle with a bar running through it. And it saiz hard drive cant be modified? How do i get arounf this?
first one to try resolving the problem :D lol ?

-> probably mounted in a wrong way. If there is no other possibility just throw a look at the fstab. Probably you got only read access
resp. If you can move and copy in some dir s but no in others, it is certainly a right problem. Just use ls -l to check that.
it s possible that this helps. if not, tell me...

[dave1234]

Sorry, your going to have to dumb it down for me, i didnt understand a word you typed. Thanks for the time.

[MacsRgr8]

is it on an external or internal HD?
OS X (probably...)?
Like maradong stated, it's probably because you're not ALLOWED to (permissions).... You might not have "write access" to that particular drive or, or in the directory on the drive you want to modify.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by maradong
first one to try resolving the problem :D lol ?

-> probably mounted in a wrong way. If there is no other possibility just throw a look at the fstab. Probably you got only read access
resp. If you can move and copy in some dir s but no in others, it is certainly a right problem. Just use ls -l to check that.
it s possible that this helps. if not, tell me... lol, don't be such a showoff :p

if he knew all that stuff you mentioned well enough to get around with it like you assume he does, why the hell would he be asking this in the first place? gotta make those terminal commands pretty specific ;)

[rainman::|:|]

lord god you people, you're making this difficult.... First a couple of questions...

Dave1234... As was asked, is this an internal HD (like your system is running from it), external (like, one you use just for certain purposes), or a network HD?
Also, are you running OS X?

If you're running X, and it's an external drive, both are reasonable assumptions i think... Click on the drive's icon, go to File -> Get Info. Click the "Ownership & Permissions" triangle. The Owner should be your username, with Read & Write access, if not click the Unlock button, authenticate, and change it.

You should also repair permissions (this might automatically do the above steps)... Open the program "Disk Utility" in your /Applications/Utilities/ folder, click the "First Aid" box, select your disk and click "Repair Disk Permissions". Should fix you right up.

:)
pnw

[maradong]

Originally posted by Shadowfax
lol, don't be such a showoff :p

if he knew all that stuff you mentioned well enough to get around with it like you assume he does, why the hell would he be asking this in the first place? gotta make those terminal commands pretty specific ;)

hm that was thought to help him ... not to blow myself up .... really.

[dave1234]

Internal hardrive on my G4 powerbook, 12 in, os x

[rainman::|:|]

Originally posted by dave1234
Internal hardrive on my G4 powerbook, 12 in, os x

Internal?? that's unexpected... Repair permissions as I explaned above, i'll bet that fixes it. But that's weird, i didn't think the root level of a HD could be made r-- for the administrator. Ah, it's been too long since i actually knew anything about permissions anyway.

pnw

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by maradong
hm that was thought to help him ... not to blow myself up .... really. i know dude, i was just kidding about the showoff thing. i wasn't kidding though, that you have to baby some of the people that ask questions that have terminal fixes. i promise you, most people that have questions are NOT terminal users. :D

[visor]

Originally posted by dave1234
Internal hardrive on my G4 powerbook, 12 in, os x

hehe, well, which directory do you want to modify? Do you have more than one user defined,
are you an admin on the system ->find out using the system settings, user preferences.

Finally open a terminal (should be in the dock, but won't be if you never put is there ;)) and type
ls -al
drag and drop a file you want to modify behind it from the finder, delete the filemane so only the directory is shown...
press enter

you should see something like
drwxr-xr-x 1 dave staff 7 May 7 11:02

if dave says 'root' and the permissions arent set to global read/write, then you don't have access ;)

permissions explain very easy:

drwx
d - directory
r read
w write
x execute

1st three are user permisisons, then group, and finally global permissions.

[bennetsaysargh]

that happens to me on my slot loading 4ooMhz iMac (combo drive).

i just restart it, and the problem is fixed. if that doesn't work, i don't know.

[bordenkecher]

sort of like the origional poster i only have read access to my external 250g drive. although when i connect the hard drive to my dell i can do whatever the heck i want with it, but when i connect it w/ my macbook pro i only get read access to it. i tried going into the disk utility but the "repair disk permissions" button is greyed out. so i really have no clue what to do. i tried going into it from my dell but theres no preferances there to change.

any suggestions?

also when i did the whole terminal thing i got this:

-bash: -rwxr-xr-x ...., i dont know if that means i admin access or what but my profile on my comp says im admin.