How to unlock external hard drive on mac
Quick Tip: Solving "Read Only" External Drive Problems on Your Mac
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hi Robert Anthony here for Mack tots
plus more and more people are finding
themselves using both Macs and PCs for
their daily computer use while
compatibility is almost a non-issue
nowadays there is one situation that may
still cause some confusion in this
tutorial I want to explain the read-only
problem you may run into when using
external storage devices on your Mac and
also show you how simple it is to fix I
have here a USB Drive that I've
purchased and I use with various pcs at
work and at school on my Mac at home I'm
able to open the drive and I can even
copy files off of the drive
but if I attempt to copy a file to the
drive I get an icon telling me that I'm
not able to do so if I try to delete a
file by pressing command delete nothing
happens and if I right-click the file
the option to move the file to the
trashcan is missing it would seem that
something is obviously not right with
the storage drive if we right-click the
drive and select get info we can see at
the bottom of the info window under the
sharings and permissions twirl down that
we only have permission to read from
this drive and nothing else the cause of
this is due to the filing system the
storage drive is formatted in if we look
in the general twirl down under the
format we can see that this drive is
formatted in the Windows NT file system
NTFS is a file system specifically
optimized for windows-based computers in
the way that it organizes the data on
the drive while this file system is
readable on max because OS 10 can
rearrange the data on the fly as it is
reading it and copying it off of the
drive the way that NTFS writes the files
to the storage device is not compatible
hence you can read but not write to the
drive many storage devices such as USB
drives and external hard disk drives
come pre formatted in NTFS because a
larger portion of consumers are still
using them on PCs however making your
storage device Mac compatible and even
cross compatible with Macs and PCs is as
simple as reformatting the drive in a
proper format
first and foremost before proceeding any
further you're about to format your
storage device be sure to copy any in
all files from the drive as the data on
the drive is going to be erased this can
be a simple task or a long undertaking
depending on the size and usage of the
storage device but it is a necessary and
an important step you can reformat a
hard drive in Mac OS 10 by using Disk
Utility
the left-hand side of Disk Utility you
will see a list of all the connected
hard drives each physical drive is shown
with the partitions of that drive nested
below highlight the physical drive you
wish to reformat and on the menu at the
top of the right hand side select erase
you will see two fields where you can
choose a file system format and a field
to name the new partition you're going
to create if you're just going to use
your drive on Mac computers you can
select one of the Mac OS options if you
wish to create a partition which is
cross compatible with Mac computers as
well as PCs you can select either ms-dos
or the exFAT format I'll select ms-dos
and rename the hard drive
I'll click erase and now the drive is
being reformatted in a cross-compatible
filing system
if I click on the drive and select get
info we can now see that the permissions
are set to read and write in TFS is a
great format to use if you're using your
drive solely on a windows-based PC but
if you need to use your drive on Mac OS
or on both PCs and Mac OS NTFS will
unfortunately not be the best format to
use in this tutorial
I've identified the cause of the
read-only error that Mac users may find
when using external storage devices I've
also shown you how to easily fix the
problem by reformatting your drive in a
Mac OS compatible format this is Robert
Anthony for Mac pets plus thanks for
watching
