flash drive permissions

[css136]

Hi everyone,

I am using a flash drive to store files from work so that I can use them at home. The problem is that when I copy anything to the flash drive, all of the file permissions are changed to rwxrwxrwx. This makes them show up as executables in my terminal window, which would not be a problem, except I use colors with my 'ls' command. Therefore, everytime I 'ls' on my flash drive, everything shows up as green. This makes it difficult to work on this drive, since I have gotten into the habit of relying on colored 'ls' so much.

I have googled this and it looks like there might be a problem with the formatting of the flash drive. It sounds like the drive format might not support file permissions, so these are somehow changed to default when it is loaded on my Mac. ???

Well, maybe that is the problem but I am far from finding a solution. I can reformat the flash drive if needed (although it's something of a hassle). Does anybody know how to change it so that the file permissions are preserved when the file is copied to the flash drive? If so, that would be great. Thank you very much!

 

[css136]

By the way, in case it makes a difference...

I am using Mac OS X v10.5.4 and a Patriot Xporter XT Boost 16GB Flash Drive. The computer I am copying from is Mac OS X v10.4.

And I don't see why it would matter, but the shell I'm using is bash.

Thanks!

 

[Mal]

What format is the drive currently in? It's likely FAT32, which doesn't support permissions, but if it's not, then there may be something else going on.

If the drive is FAT32, you'll have to reformat it, but keep in mind that if you format it as Mac OS Extended format (the default on the Mac), you won't be able to use it in a PC without special software. Likewise, you'll be unable to format and use it as an NTFS format without special software on your Mac (though there are at least free options for that). I don't know for sure if NTFS supports UNIX permissions either, btw.

jW