Is your external hard drive still read-only on Mac? It’s no surprise that most consumers would be very frustrated when this happens to them. Most of us use our external drives for data storage and the majority of us never use it for writing anything to it. Find out what you can do to fix it now!
If your external hard drive is “read-only” right now, that means that you are not able to write any files to it or even move any files to it. This basically means that you cannot save any files to this drive and you cannot read any files that have been stored on it. How frustrating! Fortunately, this is an easy fix to make.
The first thing you will want to do is remove the hard drive. You should never try to force removal of it as it will often lead to even more unfortunate problems. Instead, take the external hard drive out of the computer and disconnect the power connection. Next, disconnect the cable that it was connected to. Finally, if you are using a laptop, unplug the power from it and plug it into a different power source.
Once these things have been done, you can get your external hard drive back into the computer and start working again. To do this, first download the following to your computer: Paragon Write Protects X3 (this will protect your files from damage), a program called Data Rescue II, and an Express Spillover recovery software program. These programs will allow you to copy all of your files on the external drive over to your PC. Next, open up the Paragon Write Protects X3 software, and follow the on screen instructions. After that, click “Continue” when the software asks you if you want to continue or if you need to cancel. This will allow your computer to patch the damaged files automatically which will then replace them on your external hard drive.
If you still want to continue working after making these changes, then you can try to find the Recovery Point in your computer. Click on “Start”, then “Run” then type “regedit” (minus the quotes). This should bring up a window with a list of all the files that are currently on your computer. Click on the “Restore” button on the left side of the window to restore the files that were accidentally deleted.
Once you are done restoring the files back to their previous positions, you may want to run a virus scan on your computer to make sure that everything was not damaged in the process. After this, restart your computer and then run the Paragon Write Protects X3 software. This software will repair any of the damaged files that may be present on your internal drives.
After running this software, you will then see a dialogue box for your external hard drive. Click on “Yes” to continue, and then click” shutdown”. This will prevent your computer from shutting down in the middle of your work, as well as prevent it from being lost due to data loss. However, if you need to access the files that were lost, then use “htcutil” to restore them.
This is it – your external hard drive should now be functioning as normal again. If there are still issues, then you may want to try a software upgrade to ensure that everything is running smoothly. If nothing else works, then you can always take your machine to a specialist so that they can perform a software upgrade. There is no reason why you cannot continue to use your external hard drive – even after having made the aforementioned changes.
