My external drive shows up on my Mac, and I can open files or copy them onto the computer, but I can’t save anything to the drive itself. There’s plenty of free space, and reconnecting it hasn’t helped.
Check the format in Get Info first. If it says NTFS, that’s the reason. macOS can read NTFS but won’t let you write to it. I’ve had this happen with Windows-formatted drives.
If it is NTFS, you don’t necessarily have to reformat it. An NTFS driver will let the Mac write to the drive too. If you need the drive to work on both Mac and Windows without extra software, though, exFAT is the other option.
Also worth checking Get Info > Sharing & Permissions if the format isn’t NTFS. There’s also an “Ignore ownership on this volume” option that can matter with external drives. I’ve had an external drive show up fine but still refuse writes until I fixed the permissions.
Yep, it’s NTFS. I had no idea macOS could read it but not write to it. I still use the drive on a Windows PC, so I’d rather not install something on the Mac just for this.
Then I’d go with exFAT. If you hadn’t found NTFS, I would’ve tried First Aid in Disk Utility, especially if it used to work and suddenly stopped. But since you found out it’s NTFS, I wouldn’t bother with First Aid.
Just copy the stuff you care about somewhere else before you erase it. That’s the only part I wouldn’t skip.
After that, open Disk Utility, select the drive, click Erase, and choose exFAT. There’s a quick guide if you haven’t done it before. It’ll wipe the drive, so make sure the backup is there first.
Makes sense. I’ve got the important files backed up, so I’ll reformat it and use exFAT. Thanks everyoneeee!!