# Changing Permissions on External Drive



## Ailes Grise (Aug 29, 2004)

Hi, 

I brought back a 200GB USB 2 External drive from work.
It shows up on my desktop ok. and I can access the files
but somehow I can't copy anything to the drives. 
It says I don't have permission. when I "get info" for that drive
it says that I can only read the files and gives me no option 
to change anything.

The Drive is in NTFS format and when I checked using Sharepoints,
the owner appears to be root, I can't seem to find a way to change
permissions that will enable me to write to that disk. My comp is a
G5 2.0 DP, 10.3.5

Any help is appreciated
thanks


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## Zammy-Sam (Aug 29, 2004)

did you try to unlock the volume? Simply open the Info window (apple+i) and you should find a lock next to the owner. Click it and see if it opens. You might need type a password. Hope this will work


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## mslifkin (Aug 29, 2004)

Ailes Grise said:
			
		

> Hi,
> 
> I brought back a 200GB USB 2 External drive from work.
> It shows up on my desktop ok. and I can access the files
> ...



Hi,

I don't think that OS X can write to an NTFS partition; it can only read from it.

Regards,
Marc


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## Randman (Aug 29, 2004)

You'll likely have to reformat it. I had that happen with an external a few months ago. It mounted fine, but I had scads of problem trying to copy files to it. Just hit erase under Disk Utility and all was fine after that.


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## Ailes Grise (Aug 29, 2004)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, 

Zammy, I did that apple+i but nothing appears under owners, no locks or anything except "You can only read files"

It seems mslifkin might be right, I played that google game and found
on some sites that writing on NTFS is still limited.

I'd love to reformat Randman, but the ext HD is not mine. looks like I have to do it the long way - copy files to my Xp box and then to the HD from there.( almost got rid of Xp on that machine!)

   more cross platform headaches


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## Eirik (Jul 9, 2005)

Hi all,

The last post to this thread is nearly a year old.  I face this problem today.  Any progress regarding this "cross platform headache"?


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Jul 9, 2005)

If the drive is in NTFS format, no -- there is no progress.  You can still only read NTFS-formatted volumes.


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## Eirik (Jul 9, 2005)

Thanks for the update ElDiabloConCaca.  Can you recommend a format that I might use to reformat my friends drive such that his WinXP system can still read and write?

Thanks,

Eirik


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## bobw (Jul 9, 2005)

Use Fat32, will read and write on a Mac.


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