Hey, I recently bought a new external drive and am trying to put all my old time machine backups on it. I was on the phone with Apple support for a little bit and they said the best way to do this is to just drag and drop the whole backups folder. When I do that, a little window pops up saying that I do not have ownership of the drive, how do I change that?
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How do I enable ownership of an external drive?
- Thread starter strausd
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Similar thing happened to me. System won't recognize the external hard drive, so I am eagerly awaiting somebody to reply to your message. Here is me eagerly awaiting --> 
Sincerely, your friend, George
Sincerely, your friend, George
At one point I could have done that, but right now the external hard drive is not showing up on the desktop so I can't choose it.
Me still waiting -->
Any mounted device can also be accessed from the Computer view. To go there, choose Go -> Computer in Finder.
Or mount it with Disk Utility. And maybe, if you format it using Disk Utility, you're the owner as well? I never had a problem...
Well, I shut off the external drive, went to bed, woke up, turned the drive back on in the morning and it now shows up where it should. It checked OK with Disk Utility. I can't open the iPhoto library stored there, but I guess that is a problem for another thread. I suppose I will have to reinstall iPhoto somehow.
Thanks for your attention to this.
Sincerely,
George
Thanks for your attention to this.
Sincerely,
George
If you're past the point of no return, fair enough, but if you can erase in Disk Utility that will save you a lot of pain. Not being able to get into the iPhoto libary is consistent with incorrect permissions. If you're not going to connect the drive to a PC, format in Mac OS X case-insensitive. Lots of info on the forums for setting permissions for user documents.
'get info' to then change permissions didn't work
Hi - I tried Tomillo's suggestion: You tried selecting the drive and using 'get info' to then change permissions? I usually simply select 'ignore ownership' on external volumes. - but am still getting back up doesn't have ownership enabled. any other suggestions?
Hi - I tried Tomillo's suggestion: You tried selecting the drive and using 'get info' to then change permissions? I usually simply select 'ignore ownership' on external volumes. - but am still getting back up doesn't have ownership enabled. any other suggestions?
Correct way
Leslie, strausd, etc.
Open Disk utility, copy the name of the drive - ex: "LeslieMacBackup"
In Finder search and open terminal.
In terminal, it may ask for user name and password - enter them.
Copy and paste this:
sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/LeslieMacBackup
(Change the name from LeslieMacBackup to the actual name of the drive)
....it may ask for user name and password - enter them.
When you go back to disk utility and get info on your disk, it should have changed ownership status.
Leslie, strausd, etc.
Open Disk utility, copy the name of the drive - ex: "LeslieMacBackup"
In Finder search and open terminal.
In terminal, it may ask for user name and password - enter them.
Copy and paste this:
sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/LeslieMacBackup
(Change the name from LeslieMacBackup to the actual name of the drive)
....it may ask for user name and password - enter them.
When you go back to disk utility and get info on your disk, it should have changed ownership status.
Backup Volume Doesn't Have Ownership Enabled
I have the same issue. I noticed no one came close even guesses were way out in left field. What I have found that after all of these years with time machine and its' quirks, which when everything is working works, end of the day it's still a hack!!
I just use CCC, works every time, much faster, works over networks.
Give you an example, the time machine will not back up to the same sparse disk bundle if you switch from wireless to ethernet. How screwed is that. And if you want to restore from any volume other then Apple's Time Capsule, you have to do it in the command line! How screwed it that. After all of these years.
Reliable backups are extremely important and invaluable in certain circumstances. I have had to fully recover two Macs in one week. I used CCC.
Apple just doesn't care, they got your money. Mike Bombich at CCC, gives away a superior solution, free.
Just fed up with Apple crapy attitude. This could be fixed.
I have the same issue. I noticed no one came close even guesses were way out in left field. What I have found that after all of these years with time machine and its' quirks, which when everything is working works, end of the day it's still a hack!!
I just use CCC, works every time, much faster, works over networks.
Give you an example, the time machine will not back up to the same sparse disk bundle if you switch from wireless to ethernet. How screwed is that. And if you want to restore from any volume other then Apple's Time Capsule, you have to do it in the command line! How screwed it that. After all of these years.
Reliable backups are extremely important and invaluable in certain circumstances. I have had to fully recover two Macs in one week. I used CCC.
Apple just doesn't care, they got your money. Mike Bombich at CCC, gives away a superior solution, free.
Just fed up with Apple crapy attitude. This could be fixed.
See what a side-railing we get trapped in when we reply to a thread highjacker? We start off trying to help "strausd" with permissions, and now we are stuck helping "georgegarrigues" with a drive that doesn't even mount. Totally unrelated to the title issue.
And don't anyone try to bite me for posting old. This is just the big mess we need to learn to avoid, old or not. We avoid it by replying immediately to the highjacker "georgegarrigues" with "Go post your own question. No highjacking allowed."
And don't anyone try to bite me for posting old. This is just the big mess we need to learn to avoid, old or not. We avoid it by replying immediately to the highjacker "georgegarrigues" with "Go post your own question. No highjacking allowed."
Had the same, found the 'lock icon' and unlocked the new partition and then unticked the option at the bottom (Can't find it now - had the word 'ownership' i it.)
After that I could drag/drop the TM folder.
----------
Actually, CCC is now charged for.
I don't know if it's 'superior' - between the Disk Utility and Time machine I seem to manage to do what I need to.
That said, I recently upgraded my Mac's HD and - based on various FAQs - used CCC (it's free for 30 days
) to create my HD clone. Have to say it worked flawlessly, but then maybe Disk Utility would have worked too. I just had fewer articles explaining how.Personally I love these people who subscribe to the Cult of Mac and then complain when it doesn't seem to do everything the way they'd have it work. I have to assume you all never delivered working software to anyone.
Correct way
Leslie, strausd, etc.
Open Disk utility, copy the name of the drive - ex: "LeslieMacBackup"
In Finder search and open terminal.
In terminal, it may ask for user name and password - enter them.
Copy and paste this:
sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/LeslieMacBackup
(Change the name from LeslieMacBackup to the actual name of the drive)
....it may ask for user name and password - enter them.
When you go back to disk utility and get info on your disk, it should have changed ownership status.
Hi. This is an eXTremely old thread, but I appreciated this piece of terminal advice, however it didn't work for me.
I'm super stuck. I bought a Mac Mini 2012 so I could dual drive it. I have two 500g SSD drives in the machine. My first drive, I'm running Sierra, so I could continue to run Final Cut Pro 7 (essential for my job.). On my second drive, I installed Catalina. I was really happy for a couple of days, because when I was in my first Sierra drive I would see three drives: drive 1, drive 2, and drive "2 + data". When I wanted to switch OS's, I would go to settings, start up disk, choose the other disk and restart. Worked for days.
Then one day I booted up, and only saw two drives: drive 1, and drive 2+data. Drive 2 was gone. In Disk Utility, I can see drive 2 ghosted. In the description of drive 2 when I highlight it's ghosted name, a couple of curious things, first of all it says 479.76 GB are used, which is totally not true, it's probably empty save for the OS and about 30 gigs of photo's. For 'Mount Point' it says 'not mounted'. And for 'owners' it says 'disabled'.
Does anyone understand how this happened? Or any advice? Thanks in advance.
Oh ps, I've tried restarting and holding Option key down, and it still goes to drive 1's sign in.