No matter your operating arrangement of option, external hard drives tin exist useful in many situations. Whether you demand to move a few files to another arrangement or want to practise a quick fill-in, it tin can never injure to have a few of them around.

But an external hard bulldoze is only convenient when you lot can use it. If you're facing permission-related issues or can't add together files because the hard drive is locked, so the whole use of a hard drive is defeated. This isn't ofttimes a major problem, and generally, it'due south simple to solve.

What Does Information technology Mean When a Difficult Drive Is Locked on Your Mac?

The concept of unlocking an external hard drive on a Mac may not be familiar to you. This is partially because it can refer to a few dissimilar problems:

  1. The bulldoze is set to read-only permissions, so you can't add or delete files.
  2. The external difficult bulldoze uses a partially supported file organization, like NTFS, which macOS merely supports as read-simply.
  3. The drive is encrypted, meaning you can't access it in any style until y'all've decrypted the deejay.

How to Unlock a Difficult Drive on macOS

Now yous know the probable reasons for the locked drive, let's explore the steps yous tin take to prepare these problems.

Command-click the bulldoze icon in Finder, then select Get Info. In the Sharing and Permissions section, click the Lock button in the lesser-right corner and type in your username and password. So, bank check Ignore ownership on this volume. By doing this, your Mac treats all the files on the disk equally though they're owned by the electric current user, no matter who actually owns them.

check ignore ownership on this volume for external hard drive

If this is a drive y'all concluding formatted, you tin can modify the private permissions in the box above. This lets you alter the permissions to Read & Write for yourself while keeping the drive read-only for other users. Hither'southward a guide on macOS disk permissions to help you understand the technical concepts.

two. Decrypt the External Hard Drive

To unlock an encrypted hard bulldoze, Command-click the drive icon in the chief Finder view or the sidebar. In the menu that pops upwards, select Decrypt "Drive Name" and enter the password. This but works if you know the countersign. And if you don't, you can notwithstanding format the drive, which nosotros'll detail a lilliputian further downwards.

3. Fix Read-Only External Hard Drive Consequence

Is your external hard drive showing upwards as "read merely" on your Mac? This happens because the drive is formatted with Microsoft'southward NTFS file format. On macOS, you can simply read disks in this format, non write to them. As a upshot, y'all won't exist able to add, modify, or delete files.

If you've bought an external hard drive from Seagate, it comes with Paragon Driver to let you lot read and write data interchangeably on Windows and Mac without formatting the drive. In that location are ii split versions listed on the Seagate site, one for macOS 10.10 to 10.15, and another for the Macs running the M1 chip.

paragon drivers for seagate drive offers great compatibility between Windows and Mac

For other drives, they'll most likely use exFAT, which has no realistic file or partition size limits, or they'll require complicated ACLs and file attribution organisation like NTFS. In the outcome of a crash, you might lose data.

Note: Mac computers with Apple silicon must change the startup disk security settings to "Reduced Security" for the software to function properly. To do this, start your Mac in macOS Recovery. Choose Utilities > Startup Security Utility and modify the security policy.

How to Format an External Difficult Drive for Mac

Now that you know how to unlock your external drive, you're ready to format it for use on your Mac. Before you continue, be aware that this volition erase all the data on the drive. Unless you lot're positive that yous don't need any data, you should back it up first.

Y'all should as well consider how you're going to use the drive. Unlike file systems are better for certain tasks, so you lot'll need to select the correct file system for your needs. If you're unsure, take a look at our rundown of the all-time Mac file systems for external drives.

Open the Deejay Utility app. In the left console, you lot'll run across the listing of internal and external drives separately. Now choose View > Testify All Devices to run into the storage devices at the acme level, containers, and finally any volumes in each container.

Select the external storage device (not the container or volumes it contains). From the toolbar, click Erase. Type in the deejay name, then select your preferred selection for both Format and Segmentation Scheme. Past default, the choice is set to APFS and GUID Partition Map Scheme. When the reformatting is finished, click Washed. At last, click the Eject push side by side to the volume in the sidebar.

choose a file format for external hard drive through disk utility

Naming the option Erase makes information technology obvious that the procedure deletes your data, but this adds defoliation in another way. If you're looking at how to format an external hard bulldoze for Mac, you may non be looking for an choice named "erase."

How to Lock a Hard Drive on a Mac

If you're wondering how to lock an external hard bulldoze on a Mac, it's roughly like to unlocking information technology. To render a drive read-only, Command-click the drive, then select Get Info. Here, uncheck Ignore ownership on this volume at the bottom of the window.

In the Sharing & Permissions section, alter Read & Write to Read only for each category you wish to change. This will prevent unwanted users or groups from deleting, adding, or changing files on the bulldoze.

Information technology's simple to encrypt an external hard drive on Mac. Control-click the drive, then select Encrypt "DriveName" on the drive. Choose a password, type information technology over again, and leave a password hint. Then click Encrypt Disk and wait for the process to complete.

encrypt external hard drive Mac

External Drives Non Showing Upward?

Virtually of us use external hard drives from time to fourth dimension. If you only utilize Mac computers in your dwelling house, chances are you're not going to face any bug. You lot merely have to exist careful about Time Machine backup compatibility.

Yet, if you employ a Mac at home and a Windows PC in the office, the best pick is either exFAT or Seagate drives. Merely at times, the external difficult drive may not show upward altogether. Luckily, at that place is a long listing of troubleshooting steps yous can follow to fix these problems.

External Hard Bulldoze Not Showing Up on Mac? Here'south How to Fix Information technology

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About The Writer

Rahul Saigal (180 Articles Published)

With his M.Optom Degree in Eye Care Speciality, Rahul worked as a lecturer for many years in the higher. Writing and teaching others is always his passion. He now writes about technology and make it digestible for readers who don't understand it well.

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