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Can't write to APFS external hard drives after Ventura upgrade

I have two external drives that worked perfectly before the Ventura upgrade. Now they only allow me to read them. Here's the message I get when trying to save an illustration from Adobe Illustrator, "Can't save the illustration. You do not have enough access privileges. ID: -5000." I also can't save from any other apps to either of the drives. Both drives are formatted with APFS. What should I do to enable write access again?

Best Answered by

Jenny Zeng

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

 If you can't write to APFS external hard drives after the Ventura upgrade, the drives are likely have permission issues or file system corruption. Here are a few solutions you can try:

① Change permissions

To write to the APFS external drives on Mac, you must ensure your account has read/write privileges.

  1. Right-click the APFS drive on your Mac and click "Get Info."
  2. Tap the yellow lock and enter your login password to unlock it.
  3. In "Sharing & Permissions," set your account with the Read & Write privileges.
  4. Tick the box next to "Ignore ownership on this volume" if available.

② Repair it with First Aid

First Aid can check if the drive has disk errors and automatically repair them.

  1. Open Disk Utility.
  2. Click View > Show All Devices.
  3. Select the bottom volume of your APFS drive and click "First Aid."
  4. After the repair is finished, continue with the volume above it until the top-level physical disk is repaired.

③ Reformat your APFS drive on Mac

The last resort is to reformat your APFS drive on Mac. This removes all files on it and assigns it a working file system, so don't forget to back it up before proceeding. To learn more about reformatting the drive, read: How to Reformat External Hard Drive on Mac Without Losing Data?