osx - Western Digital external drive set to read only?
2014-07
TheLearner
I have a Western Digital Passport drive which I bought for using with my Windows Vista machine - however I now use it with OS X, but for some reason I cannot delete files off the drive. When I GetInfo for the drive it says READ ONLY.
How do I get around this?
Only a few days ago I could copy files to it but now it says it's read only.
Darth Android
The drive is probably formatted as NTFS - OS X by default will only read NTFS, and not write to it. You can use a 3rd party utility to add NTFS write support to your OSX system, however. See the answers here for solutions that allow you to do this.
AFXTWIN
Possible Duplicate:
How do I remove a MyBook’s “WD SmartWare” virtual CD from my desktop?
If I don't want it on my drive how do I delete it? I've tried delete it from the drive with zero success. I've delete the software on my previous with no issues until now. I've even tried changing the files from read only and I'm still unable to remove the software.
Sathya
The Virtual CD is the build into the firmware of the drive. There is no option to remove the virtual CD.
According to link text
harrymc
See if this article applies to your case:
A Workaround for removing Western Digital’s SmartWare Virtual CD Partition
Even if the described software doesn't apply to your O/S, I'm sure you can build a similar solution with other tools.
8088
You could try using Unlocker to remove an undeletable file as suggested by Geeks are Sexy
Unlocker is a very useful freeware that will allow you to unlock any files that are currently in use by Windows. You’ll know if this is happening if you are getting any of these messages when trying to delete a file:
- Cannot delete file: Access is denied
- There has been a sharing violation
- The source or destination file may be in use
- The file is in use by another program or user
- Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use
Unlocker will make things right again for you.
You’ll notice that right after installing the software, a new option named “unlocker” will appear when right clicking any files or folders in Windows Explorer. To unlock a locked file, just right click it, select unlocker, and the unlocker software will start. Then, click “unlock all” and close the software. Now that your file is unlocked, just delete it in Windows Explorer, as you always do. This is much simpler than solution #1 or #2, isn’t it? I hope these three solutions will help you get rid of those hard to delete files!
