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My external Hard drive is read only now :(

D

dvdiva

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 17, 2005
66
0
Using 10.3.9. External drive is NTFS and works fine in XP also worked fine on 10.3.8. Now it just says its read only with no options in Disk Utility to change the permissions to a read and write. And yes I'm logged in as the admin account.
How can I change the permissions back to read and write.
 
dvdiva said:
Using 10.3.9. External drive is NTFS and works fine in XP also worked fine on 10.3.8. Now it just says its read only with no options in Disk Utility to change the permissions to a read and write. And yes I'm logged in as the admin account.
How can I change the permissions back to read and write.
Click to expand...

Can't you select the files on the external drive and Get Info (or Command-I) and change the preferences manually to Read and Write even if it's on an external drive?
 
OS X has never been able to write to a NTFS drive. All it can do it is read it.
 
Technically, OS X (as of 10.3.5, I believe) has "limited" write capabilities to an NTFS volume. In my experience, "limited" means "virtually non-existant". Frankly I'm shocked that you could get it to work at all.

In order to get it to fully function between a Mac and a PC, the volume should be formatted as FAT32.

Please refer to this Apple KBase article for more information:

Moving hard drive

While it is possible to move some IDE PC hard drives into some model Macintosh computers, this is not the recommended method of transferring data and it should only be used by experienced computer users who understand how to install and format PC hard drives. It is only possible to read FAT and FAT32 formatted drives in a Macintosh. Do not use NTFS formatted drives in a Macintosh computer.

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther works with local NTFS-formatted volumes. The volume will be read-only.

Warning: NTFS formatted drives cannot be used in a Macintosh (except as read-only with Mac OS X 10.,3 as noted above). If you attempt to use a NTFS formatted disk, upon starting up the Mac OS will prompt you to format the drive. Do not format the drive, doing so will erase the contents of the drive. If you have an NTFS formatted disk, you must use another method to transfer the data from the PC to the Macintosh.
Click to expand...
 
so if I format the drive with a mac is there a 3rd party app that can read it or is there any 3rd party app that can read and write to ntfs for macs?
 
dvdiva said:
so if I format the drive with a mac is there a 3rd party app that can read it or is there any 3rd party app that can read and write to ntfs for macs?
Click to expand...

MacDrive on your PC will read/write to HFS+ volumes.

There's no software that will let your Mac write to NTFS. Maybe Tiger (10.4) but I've not seen any info on that yet.
 
Thanks for your help yellow - great episode of venture boys also - love that ghost that loses it's head
 
You can actually write to NTFS drives using Mac OS X and higher

If you would like to write to your NTFS drive using Mac OS X and higher, go here: http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archi...rite_to_ntfs_drives.html?CMP=OTC-7G2N43923558

Read the directions very carefully. When you get Fink, if you have something higher than OS 10.3.x, like OS 10.4.x, you will need the binary depending on what processor you have. Most likely you have Intel, so get that binary.

And obviously there is a lot more help from the fink site if you really want to fine tune your NTFS drive while connected to your Mac OS 10.x.x.

If that does not work for you, I have nothing more to suggest.

All the Best,
--Alex
 
BTW - any suggestions on how to keep the macbook pro cool, besides using a usb fan under it? the fan makes too much noise and without it, my macbook pro gets really hot after running non-stop for just one hour.

reply to amazonsales@shekhtman.com (i prefer to give my business email because my personal one is already getting spammed)

thanks,
--Alex
 
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