No matter your operating organisation of choice, external difficult drives can be useful in many situations. Whether you need to move a few files to another system or want to do a quick fill-in, it can never hurt to have a few of them around.

Just an external hard drive is only convenient when you tin use it. If y'all're facing permission-related issues or can't add together files because the hard drive is locked, and then the whole use of a difficult bulldoze is defeated. This isn't ofttimes a major problem, and more often than not, it's unproblematic to solve.

What Does Information technology Mean When a Hard Bulldoze Is Locked on Your Mac?

The concept of unlocking an external hard drive on a Mac may not exist familiar to you. This is partially because it tin refer to a few different bug:

  1. The drive is fix to read-only permissions, so you lot tin't add or delete files.
  2. The external difficult bulldoze uses a partially supported file system, like NTFS, which macOS only supports as read-only.
  3. The drive is encrypted, meaning you tin can't access it in whatever way until you lot've decrypted the disk.

How to Unlock a Difficult Drive on macOS

Now you know the probable reasons for the locked drive, let'south explore the steps y'all can take to ready these issues.

Control-click the drive icon in Finder, then select Become Info. In the Sharing and Permissions section, click the Lock push in the bottom-right corner and type in your username and password. And then, check Ignore ownership on this volume. By doing this, your Mac treats all the files on the deejay as though they're owned by the current user, no thing who actually owns them.

check ignore ownership on this volume for external hard drive

If this is a drive y'all concluding formatted, y'all tin can change the individual permissions in the box in a higher place. This lets you change 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.

2. Decrypt the External Hard Drive

To unlock an encrypted hard bulldoze, Command-click the bulldoze icon in the main Finder view or the sidebar. In the menu that pops upwardly, select Decrypt "Drive Name" and enter the password. This only works if yous know the password. And if you don't, you can still format the drive, which we'll item a little further down.

3. Fix Read-Only External Difficult Bulldoze Issue

Is your external difficult drive showing upward every bit "read but" on your Mac? This happens because the bulldoze is formatted with Microsoft's NTFS file format. On macOS, you can just read disks in this format, not write to them. Every bit a consequence, you won't be 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 bulldoze. In that location are two separate versions listed on the Seagate site, one for macOS 10.ten to 10.15, and another for the Macs running the M1 bit.

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 segmentation size limits, or they'll require complicated ACLs and file attribution system similar NTFS. In the event of a crash, you might lose data.

Note: Mac computers with Apple silicon must modify 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 alter the security policy.

How to Format an External Hard Drive for Mac

Now that you know how to unlock your external drive, you're set to format it for use on your Mac. Before yous proceed, exist enlightened that this will erase all the data on the drive. Unless you're positive that you don't demand whatsoever information, you should dorsum information technology up commencement.

You should also consider how you're going to use the drive. Unlike file systems are better for certain tasks, and so you'll need to select the correct file system for your needs. If you're unsure, take a expect at our rundown of the best Mac file systems for external drives.

Open up the Deejay Utility app. In the left panel, you'll see the list of internal and external drives separately. Now choose View > Prove All Devices to see the storage devices at the tiptop level, containers, and finally whatever volumes in each container.

Select the external storage device (not the container or volumes it contains). From the toolbar, click Erase. Type in the disk name, then select your preferred option for both Format and Partition Scheme. Past default, the option is set to APFS and GUID Partition Map Scheme. When the reformatting is finished, click Done. At last, click the Eject push button next to the book in the sidebar.

choose a file format for external hard drive through disk utility

Naming the option Erase makes information technology obvious that the process deletes your data, just this adds confusion in another way. If you're looking at how to format an external hard bulldoze for Mac, y'all may non exist looking for an option named "erase."

How to Lock a Difficult Drive on a Mac

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

In the Sharing & Permissions section, change Read & Write to Read only for each category yous wish to modify. This will foreclose unwanted users or groups from deleting, adding, or irresolute files on the drive.

It's simple to encrypt an external difficult drive on Mac. Command-click the drive, and then select Encrypt "DriveName" on the drive. Choose a password, type it again, and get out a countersign hint. Then click Encrypt Disk and look for the procedure to complete.

encrypt external hard drive Mac

External Drives Non Showing Up?

Well-nigh of usa use external hard drives from time to time. If you only use Mac computers in your home, chances are you lot're non going to confront any issues. Y'all simply have to be careful most Time Auto backup compatibility.

However, if you apply a Mac at home and a Windows PC in the office, the best option is either exFAT or Seagate drives. But at times, the external hard drive may not show upwards altogether. Luckily, there is a long list of troubleshooting steps y'all can follow to set up these issues.

External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac? Here's How to Fix It

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About The Author

Rahul Saigal (181 Articles Published)

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

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