Summary: Two methods to change Seagate external hard drives from read-only back to read-write, so that you can edit, delete, and rename files on this Seagate external hard drive. Also, if a Seagate external hard drive is read-only or files are locked on Mac due to NTFS format, you can use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to mount it in read-write mode on Mac.
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When you plug a Seagate external hard drive into your Mac, one of the worst things would be that you find your Seagate hard drive is read-only. Your photos, videos, and other files could be locked. Or your Seagate external drive could be write-protected. Are you facing such disk problem right now? Well, you are not the only one.
'I'm having a problem using my Seagate external hard drive. I only have permission to read files on my external hard drive, but I am not allowed to write or edit files on the drive when using Mac OS. Why this happened and how to fix Seagate external hard drive read-only on Mac?'
As you can see, even though Seagate is one of the most popular brands of storage devices all over the world, you could have trouble backing up or copying files to Seagate external hard drives, such as Seagate Backup Plus Protable drives. And the read-only issue, for example, Seagate external hard drives become read-only after macOS Mojave update, is one of the most common disk problems.
In this article, we introduced three possible reasons for disk being read-only on Mac, and you can find solutions to change the external drives from read-only accordingly.
Why a Seagate external hard drive is read-only on Mac?
You may be wondering why my Seagate external hard drive is read-only. In fact, read-only Seagate external hard drive results from various reasons. Generally, there are three possible reasons:
In the following part, we'll go into details about how to fix the Seagate external hard drive read-onli issue in different situations.
Case 1: The Seagate external hard drive is NTFS formatted![]()
Most of the time, a Seagate external hard drive being read-only on Mac is because the file system of this disk is the Windows NT file system (NTFS). That's because macOS disabled the NTFS write support by default. If you connect an NTFS formatted external hard drive to your Mac, you will find that files on this disk will be locked or show as read-only. You can only read this NTFS formatted Seagate external hard drive on Mac.
How to check if your Seagate hard drive is NTFS formatted on Mac?
Solution: Use NTFS for Mac to write to Seagate external hard drives on Mac
In this situation, many people may think about converting NTFS to APFS or formatting it to make the NTFS drive compatible with macOS. However, the truth is that you can fix the Seagate external hard drive read-only issue without formatting, i.e. you don't have to lose your files on this drive.
Alternatively, you can download NTFS for Mac software to enable NTFS drive write support on Mac with no fuss. There are a great number of NTFS for Mac in the market, and iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is used here as an example.
iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more
iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is a handy disk management tool, which can help you mount NTFS formatted external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. on Mac with write support. This NTFS drive mounter is also compatible with macOS 10.15 (Catalina), macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.8 (Mountain Lion).
How to use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to write to NTFS Seagate external hard drive on Mac?
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your computer.
Step 2: Launch this NTFS driver for Mac and connect Seagate external hard drive to Mac.
Step 3: Write to Seagate external hard drive after the drive is mounted successfully.
Aside from being an NTFS for Mac driver, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is also a wonderful tool to manage files on NTFS external drives. It lets users open, monut, repair, and erase NTFS drives on Mac natively and seamlessly.
Case 2: You don't have permissions to access the Seagate external hard drive
If your Seagate hard drive denies your access or restricts you to read-only activities, there is likely an ownership conflict. Being a multiuser operating system, macOS sets up access permissions for all files and folders on the system, including external drives.
Solution: Change permissions on Seagate external hard drive
To fix the read-only Seagate external hard drive issue, you need to regain full access. You can ignore the ownership or change the sharing and permissions of this disk in the Finder by following the below steps.
Step 1: Select Seagate external hard drive on your desktop or in the Finder sidebar, and then press Command + I to get information of the drive.
Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of this list and click on the triangle that is at the left side of the Sharing & Permissions tab.
Step 3: Click on the lock icon at the right bottom and type in the password to unlock this tab.
Step 4: Check the box to Ignore ownership on this volume, or you can toggle it off and then on if it's already enabled.
Step 5: Click on the gear button and choose Apply to enclosed items… to save your changes.
Then you can go to check if your Seagate external hard drive is read-only still. If not, you will be able to write to this disk.
Case 3: The Seagate external hard drive has some disk errors
If your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only not for the reasons above, you may need to have a check if there is any inner disk error. Some formatting errors will make an external hard drive read-only on Mac. If this is the cause, usually you will see a warning in Disk Utility that states it is only being mounted in read-only mode.
Solution 1: Fix read-only Seagate external hard drive in Disk Utility
Fortunately, there is a built-in tool called First Aid that can check and repair some minor disk errors. When your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only due to logical disk problems, you can use First Aid to repair it then.
Rupee foradian font for windows 10. https://counterkeen487.weebly.com/user-manual-for-mail-box-30-slots-by-peacon-corp.html. Here is the guidance to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive with Disk Utility:
Solution 2: Reformat Seagate external hard drive
However, if Disk Utility fails to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive, the last thing you can try to remove write protection from Seagate external hard drives would be reformatting. Reformatting will assign a new file system to this disk, consequently, the Seagate external hard drive issue could be fixed.
But before you go ahead to erase this disk, you should know that reformatting will wipe the files on this hard drive. Thus, you are advised to check if you have a copy of data back in the first place , or you can recover data from this external hard drive with iBoysoft Mac data recovery to avoid data loss.
If you're sure that you have data backup in hand, you can proceed to reformat this read-only external hard drive with the following tutorial. Itunes download 12.9 for mac.
A final note
Besides Seagate external hard drives, Toshiba, WD, Samsung, or other brands' external hard drives will come across the read-only problem. It is common to see people complaining WD My Passport external hard drives suddenly became read-only on Mac. You can also use these solutions to fix this problem. But if you are unable to fix it with the solutions suggested above, you can only send it to local disk repair store for help, but that will cost a lot usually.
When you work for a storage solutions company you get a lot of questions from people about hard drive formats — especially about which formats are compatible across the most common operating system platforms, Windows and Mac. I get this question about once a year from my father-in-law.
So I thought I’d present a short primer on the formats hard drives use with and between these two primary operating systems.
NTFS, HFS+, FAT -- These are the primary formats that are in use today by PC users. One is for Windows, one is for Mac, and one crosses the two (but with its own limitations).
Windows — With the advent of Windows NT, Microsoft moved their optimized drive format to something called NTFS (New Technology File System). This is the format that is used with all current versions of Windows. If you have a Windows PC (NT on, including Windows 7), then your system drive is most likely formatted in the NTFS format.
Mac — Since Mac OS 8.1, the Mac has been using a format called HFS+ — also known as Mac OS Extended format. This format was optimized to minimize the amount of drive storage space used for a single file (the previous version used sectors loosely, leading to rapidly lost drive space). This is the required format for a bootable Mac hard drive. For a hard drive to be used with Time Machine (Mac OS X 10.5 and later), the drive must be formatted in HFS+ Journaled (Journaled adds an extra element to the standard HFS+ format).
Interoperability — Now for the confusing part: what drive formats work with what OSs. While Windows can read and write to NTFS formatted drives, it can neither write nor read to a drive that has been formatted HFS+. (I should note here that there are several third party software drivers on the market that will allow either OS to read and write the other’s formats — but not all functionality is supported, and they both reduce performance when going through such an application)
The Mac, on the other hand, can read an NTFS formatted drive — it just can’t write to it (again, unless you use a third party software driver).
There is yet a third drive format that CAN be used across these two operating systems without the need for special third party drivers. It is called FAT. FAT has several forms and variations, the most recent of which is FAT32. (For more information on FAT formats check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table)
Most forms of removable media (memory cards for digital cameras, flash drives, etc) use the FAT format, as the capacity of most of these devices is significantly smaller than hard drives, and the more robust formats of the two predominant operating systems is not required.
The one simple benefit of the FAT format today is that it can be read from and written to by either of the operating systems discussed here. So on a Windows PC, you can read and write to a FAT formatted drive. And you can do the same on a Mac. This format gives you the ability to very easily move a drive between the two compute platforms.
There’s one significant limitation to this though — a FAT32 formatted drive cannot take a file larger than 4GB. The error message that gets reported if you try to copy a file larger than 4GB onto the drive is misleading — it says that there is not enough room for the file. That would lead you to believe that the drive is full. The drive can be completely empty and still not have room for the file — it simply cannot handle a file of that size.
Paragon Ntfs For Mac Seagate
For a bit more info on how to format a hard drive check out our knowledge center.
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