
How to Check Permissions for External Hard Drive on Mac In other words, using an NTFS drive means that you don’t have permission to write to your external drive on Mac. Due to compatibility issues, NTFS is “Read Only” on Mac (but “Read & Write” with Windows). NTFS Formatting.Your drive may be formatted to NTFS. You can attempt to fix it using Disk Utility. Corruption can occur due a virus attack, interruption during read and write, software issues, and/or physical damage. Formatting errors are a symptom of a corrupted drive. Click here to jump to that section.įormatting Errors. This can easily be changed through Finder. It’s possible that the “Read Only” permissions were carried over to your Mac when you connected your drive. You can change an external hard drive’s read and write permissions using a computer. Knowing which one of these applies to you is key to successfully fixing this issue. There are 3 common reasons why an external hard drive is “Read Only” on Mac. Why is External Hard Drive Read Only on Mac? How to Recover Data From an External Hard Drive after Formatting.Method 2: Use Disk Utility’s First Aid Function.

Method 1: Change Drive Permissions on macOS.


