Read-only files on external Maxtor drive?

[lawyervon]

I have a Maxtor external USB drive that holds all of my iTunes music and other MP3s. It was originally formatted and set up using Windows XP.

Now that I have my MacBook Pro, I plugged the drive into my MacBook and went to clean up some of the data on the drive, particularly deleting iTunes music that had accidentally been duplication.

When I try to delete a song, it says I don't have proper permission to perform that action. Pulling up the "Get Info" on the files, it says I only have read-only permissions on the files. Ugh!

How do I fix this?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Your drive is most likely formatted as NTFS, which is read-only under Mac OS X.

There is no workaround other than to manage the music with a Windows computer, or reformat the drive as FAT32 to have read/write capabilities and retain cross-platform compatibility.

If you intend to use the drive only on a Mac, I would recommend the HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) format.

[eric2006]

I have a question about formating external drives, related to this.
Ok, when I reformatted my external hard drive, I had a few mac options, and one windows option: MS DOS filesystem. What exactly is that? FAT 32? Something else? It works on windows and mac.. (I choose an HFS type format in the end, because I was using the drive for video)

Also, you might want to try doing a get info on the drive, then looking for the checkbox "Ignore ownership on this volume". It doesn't look like that'll solve your problems, but it's worth a try before you reformat.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Yes, MS-DOS is FAT32.

[lawyervon]

So is there a way to avoid losing my entire iTunes collection? Can I copy the files to my computer in read-only format and then copy them back to the Maxtor drive after the reformat? If I do it that way, will I be able to affect the permissions or will they be stuck read-only?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Only the drive is read-only... your files are still read/write to the owner, so yes, you can copy them to your Mac, format the drive, then copy them back. You'll retain full ownership.

[pixmaniowa]

Do you have these songs on an ipod? Normally you can't download songs from your ipod to a computer, but there are new programs that will allow you to do so. Look up iPod2Mac and iPodDisk. They both open up the iPod so you can transfer the songs like a hard drive.

Another solution may be that you can change the ownership and permissions globally. Just like Windows there is a root user availble althouth it is hidden on the Mac. The obvious reason is that Mac is designed to be safe from root level tampering by all but the most advanced users. But since you are on the verge of reformatting the drive...what can it hurt.
To get to the root user I had to use the Tiger install disk. When the disk boots there is a toollbar at the top that includes a Utlitiies command. In the pulldown go to reset password. When selected it shows you that there is a root user. Set the password for that user. Then when you go to log in, select Other, log in with root and password. Then when you access the getinfo for folders you will be able to change permissions to any user from any user. There is also a group to be selected. This may help. BE CAREFUL WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE! I AM NOT AN EXPERT. But this helped me recover some trapped files with a disk mishap of my own. I then had to reformat the drive, but I saved my files. Good luck.