I have a WD Elements 1042 Media external hard drive and am using a mac with a Monterey os. I have reformatted it to be Mac OS Extended (previously it was compatible with Windows), but I still cannot save files to it. It is still saying that it’s read only. I have tried changing the permissions on it to write as I have seen suggested in a few different places online but it doesn’t work. Does anyone know how I can make it writable
If you have already reformatted your drive to Mac Extended ( aka HFS+), and you are still facing issues with it being read-only, there could be several reasons for this problem.
Firstly, check the physical switch and file system format. Also, Run the First Aid on your drive from Disk Utility, as it will repair the disk’s file system. You can check the Sharing & Permissions section, and make sure that your user account has “Read & Write” access.
Hi, thanks for the reply. The external hard drive does not have a physical read only switch. I have tried running the fist aid on disk utility a few times, reformated it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and to APFS and have done alot of googleing on this but cannot find a solution , its always saying it’s read only. I have also tried changing the permissions
I’d suggest checking the file system in Disk Utility again and see if the external hard drive has been successfully reformatted to Mac OS Extended. If the reformat failed for some reasons and the file system is NTFS (like you said, it was previously a Windows format), you need to use third-party apps to enable Mac to write to it, because Mac can’t natively write an NTFS-formatted drive.
If the external hard drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended, but you still cannot store file on it, try the following solutions:
(1) Enable Ignore ownership on this volume.
(2) Check if there is enough free space on the external drive and free up more storage space.
(3) Repair it with Disk Utility First Aid again.
Also read: Can’t Save/Write to External Hard Drive on Mac/MacBook?
