Why does ext.drive keep saying I don't have priveleges

[ArthurDaley]

If I try to create a new folder on my external drive it says that I don't have the sufficient access privileges. I only have one log in on my Mac and I've only used the drive on this Mac. However the drive was another one sent back from WD after mine broke and it's clearly refurbished - maybe somehow it's still "linked" to the last owner? I can copy to it etc though.

If I do a ls -l /Volumes then I notice that the drive instead of having my name against it like all the other drives it has "root" instead and instead of saying "Staff" like all the other drives it says "Wheel".

 

[ArthurDaley]

Worked it out.

Use:

sudo tcsh

To change to root. Then issue this command to change the owner and group of the Volume (external drive in my case):

chown <username>:<group name> /Volumes/<volume name>

Don't include the angle brackets.

 

[snowmoon]

Worked it out.

Use:

sudo tcsh

To change to root. Then issue this command to change the owner and group of the Volume (external drive in my case):

chown <username>:<group name> /Volumes/<volume name>

Don't include the angle brackets.

What probably happened was the drive was formatted and used on another mac with different user ID's. You may also need to use the -R flag if there are subdirectories.

chown -R user:group /Path/

 

[skunk]

It's all Greek to me.

Oh, no it isn't, I can understand Greek. What you wrote makes no sense to me at all...

 

[snowmoon]

It's all Greek to me.

Oh, no it isn't, I can understand Greek. What you wrote makes no sense to me at all...

It's geek, not Greek.

 

[skunk]

It's geek, not Greek.

Ah, that's where I was going wrong then. Thx.

 

[snowmoon]

Ah, that's where I was going wrong then. Thx.

For the non-geek, the chown ( Change Owner ) command is a throwback to the unix roots. The same can be achieved by command-i on the volume in finder and editing the sharing and permission at the bottom.