External NTFS Drive suddenly 'Read-Only'?

[peanutismint]

I have an external hard drive, it's formatted in NTFS, sort of like a 'bridge' between my Macbook and my Windows machine. I was able to write to the NTFS drive from my Mac using MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. A few days ago, the hard drive showed up as 'read-only', and is still that way now. I've tried repairing disk permissions, reinstalling the NTFS applications, nothing seems to change the write permissions back.

Anybody have any ideas?

 

[kwood]

Try plugging it into a Windows PC and running a disk check on it. (Go to My computer, right click on the external drive, ¿disk tools?, then disk check).

I think the option is under disk tools or tools or something like that. If that doesn't work see if the Windows PC can write to it, or even another Mac with the NTFS-3g/MacFuse installed.

 

[nplima]

another one

This is why my external hard drive is formatted with 2 partitions.

one 32GB as FAT32, the remaining 430GB with EXT2.
Any modern OS will be able to read the first partition without any add-ons. the bigger partition will be read with freely available drivers for Windows or OS X.

OP should consider using Partition Magic and change from NTFS to something that plays well with others.

 

[peanutismint]

Yep, PC can read/write fine. I'll try it with another Mac, unless anyone else has any other ideas?

 

[peanutismint]

This is why my external hard drive is formatted with 2 partitions.

one 32GB as FAT32, the remaining 430GB with EXT2.
Any modern OS will be able to read the first partition without any add-ons. the bigger partition will be read with freely available drivers for Windows or OS X.

OP should consider using Partition Magic and change from NTFS to something that plays well with others.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot! But that still doesn't answer the problem of why it worked last week but not this week...

 

[TBi]

Are you sure it is mounted with NTFS-3G? There is a different icon when connected with the built in apple ntfs driver and ntfs-3g.

 

[peanutismint]

Are you sure it is mounted with NTFS-3G? There is a different icon when connected with the built in apple ntfs driver and ntfs-3g.

It's probably not, as it's now displaying the orange standard 'firewire drive' icon, whereas before it would display the same icon as a network drive, a sort of sphere within a cube? Any ideas why it wouldn't be mounting with NTFS-3G? I've re-installed it...no change?

 

[TBi]

I've heard parallels uses an old version NTFS-3G for viewing images formatted in NTFS and that this screws with the newer versions of NTFS-3G.

Try mounting by hand using the commands. Also make sure the bundle is installed so that the program that does automatic mounting is running. Do a

ps -aux (or is is ps -ef)

in terminal and see if you can find the app.

ps -aux | grep appname

 

[theBB]

If you use this external primarily from your Mac, then I would format it with HFS+. On Windows, you can use HFSExplorer to read access your files. If you have a small additional partition with FAT32 or NTFS, you can use that to transfer Windows files over to your Mac.

This is a less of a hassle than ntfs3g stuff for me.

 

[7on]

could someone format the external UFS and install a ufs driver in Windows?

 

[nplima]

could someone format the external UFS and install a ufs driver in Windows?

yes, but UFS is still read-only under Windows.

AFAIK there's 4 R/W solutions:
EXT2 for free - requires software add-ons to OS X and Windows, you need a Linux liveCD handy in case you need to do a FSCK.
FAT32 for free - requires initial effort to convince Windows to format the drive if >32GB;
NTFS and HFS - only with commercial software.

 

[TBi]

NTFS and HFS - only with commercial software.

NTFS-3G is free

 

[theBB]

NTFS and HFS - only with commercial software.

HFSExplorer is free.

 

[7on]

Where are these ext2 drivers?

 

[evangraj]

same issue

Hello. I have exactly the same issue. When I go the ps -ef | grep ntfs I do not see a process running. My icon is a firewire drive. I have a macbook pro. When ntfs 3g was working the permissions on the drive were listed as Custom where as now they are listed as read only. I have unistalled both mac fuse and ntfs 3g several times. HELP

 

[kalium]

ntfsfix fixed it for me

Same issue with mac (OSX 10.7.5 & NTFS-3G) and a USB HD NTFS-formatted who suddenly became read-only after months of read-write usage. Unsure about the cause but maybe a brutal unplugging though it was not the 1st time. Anyway, here is what worked for me to get back my read/write access:

Run Terminal
> su admin
(or whatevr administrator/sudoer you may have on your machine)
> mount
Tells you the moint point /Volume/HDXXXand the device adress: /dev/sdXXX
> umount /Volume/HDXXX
(depending on the mount point of your HD)
> ntfsfix /dev/sdXXX
(depending on the device adress)

It wil show a series of message
And hopefully fix the readonly issue : once it's done, unplug the HD, replug.
And you should be all set...
Good luck