My wife's windows computer crashed and we parted it all out. We kept the hard drive from it and had my brother move everything onto a small 120gb external because he had all the equipment and know-how. He did it on his windows computer, and now everything I have on the external is read only. I can't reformat the drive because I need the pictures and music and everything on the drive, but is there any other way to get write access to the drive without taking it back to my brother?
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windows formatted hard drive?
- Thread starter greganpace
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Yes. Should be easy to do. You're trying to do this on a Mac, correct? Mount the HD. Right click on it and choose Get Info. At the bottom of the Get Info window are the Permissions for the drive. Click the lock icon, enter your password and then change the permissions to Read and Write.
There is no lock. It just says "You can only read." It says the drive is formatted in NTFS, which I really don't have an idea of what that means, but I know that it means that the drive is read-only on a mac.
I found a column online (http://blog.adamnash.com/2007/05/25/how-to-mount-ntfs-drives-on-mac-os-x-with-readwrite-access/) that talks about the NTFS-3G, and think that would solve my problem, but when he says technically savvy, I'm not sure I qualify. I'm pretty sure I know just enough to really screw something up and have no clue how to fix it.
NTSF format is your main obstacle. Search the forum for NTSF. GGSStudios has a complete list of drive formats and what you need to make them read write on a Mac. And yes NTSF 3G is one of a few that will work for you.
Mac OS X can read NTFS, but not write to it, unless you enable that function.
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
- Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
- Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
[*]To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free) - Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx $36).
- Some have had good results with Paragon (approx $20)
- Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and Lion, but is not advisable, due to instability.
- AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
- Maximum file size: 16 TB
- Maximum volume size: 256TB
They'll probably have better success searching for NTFS than they would searching for NTSF.
SO I installed the NTFS-3G and when it finished I followed the suggestion to unmount and then mount the drive again. Bad decision. It now says the drive was not unmounted properly and it recommends repairing it with a windows computer. Did I screw it up? I don't own a windows computer. Any other suggestions? There is a force mount button I am very tempted to push...
Mac OS X can read NTFS, but not write to it, unless you enable that function.
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
- Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
- Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
[*]To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)- Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx $36).
- Some have had good results with Paragon (approx $20)
- Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and Lion, but is not advisable, due to instability.
- AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
- Maximum file size: 16 TB
- Maximum volume size: 256TB
They'll probably have better success searching for NTFS than they would searching for NTSF.
Misspelled your handle too. Sorry about that.
First, did you restart your computer after installing NTFS-3G? If so, are you booted into 64-bit mode or 32-bit mode?
It's not a problem. The drive and data are fine.
No worries! Thanks for your help!
If it were me, I'd find someone with a Windows computer to mount and unmount the drive.