Both the options are discussed in detail ahead, so let's get moving. Once it is established, you have an NTFS formatted hard drive, either format it to a Mac compatible file system or use a third-party tool to access the drive. There you can use the same steps to Get Info about the hard drive format as the situation one. That's because NTFS is a Windows file system, so Mac can't write NTFS files. NTFS formatted external driveĮxternal hard drives formatted to an NTFS file system have read-only support for Mac by default. To do so, go to Finder > Get Info window > Expand Sharing & Permission display menu to know the information about the file or folder. The simplest solution here is to check your files and folders permission settings and change to remove read-only errors. This, in return, will make it impossible to copy or edit those files to a Mac or any other computer. While transferring those files and folders to an external hard drive, people often tend not to change the access permission settings. Some people prefer to set up different access permissions for their sensitive files and folders to protect them from unauthorized access.

However, mainly external hard drives read-only on Mac in two situations: Situation 1. Often people face read-only errors on Mac due to incompatible file systems, internal errors, and other reasons.

Why Is My External Hard Drive Read Only on Macįirst of all, you aren't the only one whose external hard drive is read-only on Mac. So, let's scroll down and fix read-only errors on Mac. That's because it is possible to explore external hard drives read-only without formatting on Mac.īelow we have disclosed the three simple options to access an external drive on Mac without losing any data. Then, no need to worry about formatting external drives or losing your data. PAGE CONTENT: Why Is My External Hard Drive Read Only on Mac How to Explore External Hard Drive Read-only Without Formatting on Mac (3 Fixes)ĭo you want to connect an external hard drive to a Mac machine? But you end up getting an external hard drive read-only error.

Is my external hard drive read only