Request for help with external drive/disk permissions
 

I am running osx 10.4.11 on a macbook pro intel with no other obvious problems..
However, just recently I have had a problem with an Iomega 250G external drive and a card reader with my camera mini sd 1G card...they say I cannot delete via the mac because I do 'not have permission'....I check out the info on them with apple and 'i' and find that in the permissions and ownerships it says they are 'read only' with no options of changing them...
Any ideas greatly appreciated
Thanks
Jem

In a terminal window, type:

cd /volumes
ls -la


What are the results? You should get a line something like this:

drwxrwx--- 85 someusername staff 2924 Jun 27 08:30 Drivename

Hi..I don't know how to get a terminal window open...just looked on 'help' but nothing comes up...sorry for sounding like a total newb..

While in the Finder, press ⌘-u and the Utilities folder should open. Look for Terminal in there. When you open it, a window should appear. Type the commands there.

-- Oops! That should be SHIFT-⌘-U

Hi..here are the results...copied and pasted from terminal window
Welcome to Darwin!
Jems-Macbook-Pro:~ Jem$ cd /volumes
Jems-Macbook-Pro:/volumes Jem$ Is la
-bash: Is: command not found
Jems-Macbook-Pro:/volumes Jem$
Jems-Macbook-Pro:/volumes Jem$ cd volumes /Is la
-bash: cd: volumes: No such file or directory
Jems-Macbook-Pro:/volumes Jem$

You got the 'cd /volumes' correct, but the second command is, in lower case:
LS -LA

You can copy/paste it from here if you like.

sorry!
 

I was reading the first 'l' as an upper case 'i'...
Here are the results..
Jems-Macbook-Pro:/volumes Jem$ cd /volumes
Jems-Macbook-Pro:/volumes Jem$ ls -la
total 40
drwxrwxrwt 4 root admin 136 Nov 18 15:59 .
drwxrwxr-t 34 root admin 1258 Nov 18 13:59 ..
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Nov 18 13:59 Macintosh HD -> /
drwxrwxrwx 1 Jem Jem 16384 Jan 1 1980 NO NAME
Jems-Macbook-Pro:/volumes Jem$

I'm assuming this is the problem drive:
drwxrwxrwx 1 Jem Jem 16384 Jan 1 1980 NO NAME
It's odd because it looks like everyone has read/write permission.

Are you logged in as an administrator?

I am the only log in..
 

..so pretty sure I am 'administrator'.....I have a link with local mac store so will take it down tomorrow...many thanks for your help and patience.
I haven't done anything recently that would have cased this but have had a problem with Safari since the new os update the other week, so maybe something related to that?
Thanks
Jem

Can you see anything like this when you do a get info on the drive?

Can you set it to ignore ownership on the volume? (The little check box at the bottom of the image above.)

yes...
 

http://myskitch.com/sooper8/screensh...118-162238.jpg
This is a snap shot of the card reader...I have given the iomega to a friend to look at so I can't snap shot that for you today(only thing that might be worth noting is that the iomega 250G was originally bought from a PC owner, but he didnt put any permissions on as far as he knows)..

Ah, I see! It's format is an old DOS format: FAT 16. OS X can only read from that format. It cannot write.

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archiv...p/t-70691.html

It's possible the same is true for the Iomega, in which case you need to repartition it. Be sure to back up first!

Many thanks..
 

...will that be the same problem on the Iomega drive too do you think?
By the way...many thanks for your help and patience!
Very much appreciated
Regards
Jem

Yes, it could be, or it could be a permissions problem.

By the way, you might be able to repartition/reformat the card with Disk Utility, but I'm not sure. If you do, you need to be sure the camera will still read/write to it.

many thanks!
 

many thanks!

By the way, OS X reads and writes to FAT16 volumes with no problems at all. I also mentioned this in the thread that cwtnospam links to, and included a picture of my USB drive, which is formatted as FAT16.

Trevor

Oops! I guess I just assume there's got to be a problem when it's a PC format.

So then why is it read only? I can see maybe the Iomega is NTFS, but why can't the Mac write to the card?

Edit:

Hmm, it seems that at least one card reader treats FAT32 as read only, so I guess it could be the card reader.

That's a good theory.

We can find out more information about the disk if jbidulph will let us see a screenshot of Disk Utility, with the FAT16 drive selected, or else will let us see the results of the following Terminal command:

diskutil info /Volumes/"NO NAME"

Trevor

sorry Trev..
 

..I took down the snap from my online photo app called Skitch after I got what I thought was the answer..I will look for it and post up again..
Regards

Sorry about that, jbiddulph. :o It is possible that you can't write to the Iomega because of the format. If it is NTFS, it would be read only for the Mac.