My Imac says my external hard drive is in read only mode ?

Question

I have a Maxtor 500GB hard drive, when I mount it to my Imac it says I do not have the proper permissions. It is in read only mode. I have a new Intel Imac on OSx. How do i get it to be in write mode, or read/write mode.

Answer 1

It is probably formatted in ntfs, the filesytem that Windows uses, OSX can read a ntfs drive but it can not write to it, you will have to format it in the mac file format, hfs, to be able to use it on your Imac, or if you want to use this drive with both OSX and Windows you will have to format it as a fat32 drive, both OSX and Windows can read and write to fat32 drives.