Why's my external harddrive now read only?

[Strix]

following on from the dos thread....

here's the full story:

the external hard drive came with a partition, which was preventing a video file from being saved to it, so we've followed the instructions to convert it fom FAT32 to NTFS, but now it says it's read only

anybody know how to fix this?

[SLW210]

What brand of hard drive?

[zars]

Can't you simply change it from the properties window? if you're using DOS the command attrib /? may help

[Strix]

It's a Freecom on the outside, but it seems to think it's a Samsung when you plug it in

We've plugged it back into the machine that altered it's structure, and it's fine with having files added to it there

the machine it was restructured on was being run on a system administrator account

the machine it used to work with but is now sulking on is locked down by both feet by the company IT dept

[architecture68-raff]

Sounds to me like you might need to to reconfigure the hard drive's security options to allow for non-admin users to write to it (especially since you said that it was configured using an admin account).

The solution might vary depending on whether you use simple file sharing or not, because with simple file sharing turned on I don't think you see the security tab in the drive's properties.

Using an admin account, right click on the drive then go to properties. On the security tab, make sure that the group "Everyone" has adequate permissions to meet your needs. Otherwise, you could set specific permission levels to individual user accounts or groups.

More detailed explanations can be found here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456988.aspx) as well as other sites by searching the net for windows file permissions.

[Strix]

thanks for that :thumbsup:

the strange thing is - there is only a security tab if we plug it into the machine it won't work on :?

[SLW210]

Try it on another computer besides the two you have already tried.

[Strix]

Like one in the IT dept? :D

[SLW210]

Does it work on any other computers?

[Strix]

I'll ask him when he gets home :thumbsup:

[f700es]

Wow, that is really weird. I put an external HD together last year, bought the external case and put in a spare hard drive, and it was plug and play. Do this new ones come unformatted?

[SLW210]

I'll ask him when he gets home :thumbsup:

You live with the IT guy? :o

[Strix]

no - they don't come unformatted

it was partitioned, such that a large video file wouldn't fit on it, so we hacked about with it - but if you read through my posts you'll see a blow by blow account of it's resultant behaviour

wash your mouth out SLW - I'd not be caught dead with an IT guy :P

[SLW210]

no - they don't come unformatted


it was partitioned, such that a large video file wouldn't fit on it, so we hacked about with it - but if you read through my posts you'll see a blow by blow account of it's resultant behaviour

wash your mouth out SLW - I'd not be caught dead with an IT guy :P

:sweat: