Lacking write permissions on external hard drive

[maxptyson]

I know there is a thread for this but I am such a Mac novice I am unable to follow it. Quite frankly I am nervous about messing this drive up. I am on OS 10.6.8. My drive is formatted with Fat32. It is the one labeled Music. I have read permissions only.

Carol-Griffins-MacBook-Pro:~ gmonee$ ls -alOe /Volumes
total 8
drwxrwxrwt@ 5 root admin hidden 170 Apr 22 10:50 .
0: group:everyone deny add_file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit,only_inherit
drwxrwxr-t 31 root admin - 1122 Jun 24 2011 ..
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin - 1 Apr 22 10:50 Macintosh HD -> /
drwxr-xr-x 1 gmonee staff - 393216 Apr 3 23:15 Music
drwxrwxrwx@ 10 gmonee staff - 340 Aug 18 2009 WD SmartWare
Carol-Griffins-MacBook-Pro:~ gmonee$ id
uid=501(gmonee) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),401(com.apple.access_screensharing),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),204(_developer),100(_lpoperator), 98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),80(admin),79(_appserverusr),61(localaccounts),12(everyone)
Carol-Griffins-MacBook-Pro:~ gmonee$ echo "done"

Could someone please tell me exactly what I need to do to get write permissions? Thanks in advance.

[trevor]

Are you sure that the "Music" drive is FAT32 and not NTFS? I suspect that it's NTFS, and that to get write ability, you will need to install something that gives you the ability to write to NTFS drives in OS X, such as ntfs-3g for example.

Could we see the results of the following command in the Terminal?

diskutil list

Or to say that another way, I don't see any reason that you would have problems writing to the Music drive from the gmonee user if it is formatted FAT32.

Trevor

[maxptyson]

/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 499.8 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: CD_partition_scheme *804.4 MB disk1
1: Apple_partition_scheme 700.4 MB disk1s0
2: Apple_partition_map 32.3 KB disk1s0s1
3: Apple_HFS WD SmartWare 160.8 MB disk1s0s2
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *999.5 GB disk2
1: Windows_NTFS Music 999.5 GB disk2s1
Carol-Griffins-MacBook-Pro:~ gmonee$



Alas you are correct FAT32 when not yield permissions issues. When I attach the disk to a PC it shows as a UDF drive and of course no access issues. Any ideas how to address this on the macbook pro?

[maxptyson]

Although I never like to pass up an opportunity to learn something new. I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to move the contents of the Music drive somewhere else. Reformat the external drive and move the mp3 files back to it.

max

[DeltaMac]

Yes, you can do that. You'll then have the opposite problem, if you want to share that with a Windows PC - won't work when used natively with Windows.

[trevor]

1: Windows_NTFS Music 999.5 GB disk2s1

As I suspected, the drive named 'Music' is formatted NTFS.

To write to that in OS X, you'll need something that gives you write access to NTFS drives. A default install of OS X gives you read-only access to NTFS.

Some examples are:
ntfs-3g
Tuxera NTFS (the for-cost commercial sister to ntfs-3g)
Paragon NTFS (another for-cost commercial NTFS)

Trevor