Tell me more ×
Ask Different is a question and answer site for power users of Apple hardware and software. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 3 down vote favorite

I have a Mac Book Pro. When I attach my external hard drive to it, I can only read rights. How to I get read and write rights?

share|improve this question
What is the formatting of the external hard drive? Is it NTFS? FAT? HFS? You can look this up by plugging in the HDD, right clicking on the HDD icon, pressing Get Info. There next to Format the formatting is shown. – Bart Arondson Jan 20 at 0:15

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote

A common cause of this would be the external drive being formatted in NTFS.

If your external hard drive is NTFS formatted (a common Windows format), MacOS X can only mount it read-only. There are third-party add-ons that would allow a Mac to write to a NTFS, but out of the box, Macs can read but not write to this format.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.