How To Fix Seagate External Hard Drive Read Only Mac?

Seagate external hard drives are made to back up important data and media stored on your personal computer. There might be situations when you plug a Seagate external hard drive into your Mac and find that it is read-only. This leads to a frustrating situation, which none of us would like to experience. Fortunately, it is easy to fix the Seagate external hard drive read only Mac problem. So, do check out the sections below to make your hard drive fully functional.

THE FILE SYSTEM IS NTFS

Most Seagate external hard drives are read-only on Mac devices because they are pre-formatted with the Windows NT file system (NTFS) by the manufacturer. This, indeed, will affect the Seagate Plus Ultra Touch, Portable drive, and Slim drives.

If you connect an NTFS formatted external hard drive to your Mac, you will find that the data on the disk is locked or shown as read-only (You can read but can’t add any files).

• The only solution to the read-only issue is downloading NTFS for Mac software to enable NTFS drive support on Mac.
• There are various software available on the web; try to use them to solve your “Seagate external hard drive read only Mac” problem.

CHANGE THE USER PERMISSIONS

To access all the hard drive functionalities, you need to regain full access. Follow the below steps to do so.

• First, connect the Seagate external hard drive to your Mac.
• Open the Seagate folder.
• Press Command + I to get the information of the drive.
• Scroll to the bottom of the list and then click on the inverted triangle icon on the left side of the Sharing & Permission tab.
• Type the password to unlock the tab.
• Check the box to pass over the ownership on this volume.
• Click the Gear icon and then select Apply to save the changes.
• Now, you will be able to read and write with your Seagate external hard drive.

REFORMAT THE DRIVE

If still the seagate external hard drive read only mac problem persist, you can fix it by reformatting the Seagate drive to a Mac-compatible format with Mac Disk Utility. Before that, remember to back up all the important data to a different drive with the help of any data backup software (Formatting erases all the files).

• Launch Disk Utility to manage the drive.
• Head to Applications > Utilities or else press Command + Space and type “Disk Utility.”
• Select the Seagate external hard drive in the left sidebar.
• Click the Erase button in the main window.
• Choose a proper file system and rename your hard drive.
• Tip: You can choose MS-DOS as a file format.
• Click Erase to reformat your Seagate external hard drive.
• Wait patiently until the reformatting process gets completed.
• Now, you can see the status from “You can only read” to “You can read and write,” which means that you can normally read and write on the drive on your Mac.

CHECK AND REPAIR HARD DRIVE ERRORS

In case reformatting has not solved the issue, then you can use Disk Utility to check the errors and repair the external hard drive.

If you are still facing the “Seagate external hard drive read only Mac” problem, then do consider clicking the Call button to reach our technicians to get the full support possible.