Written by
Connie YangSummary: We'll explain what the file system permissions are and tell you the file system permissions examples in this post. More importantly, guide you to change file system permissions for external hard drives on your Mac or PC.
You first hear about file system permissions when you are unable to create a new folder on an external hard drive on your Mac and are told to change the permissions.
If you are wondering "What are the permissions of a file system?" and "How to change file system permissions on your Mac?", just find the answers from our introduction to file system permissions.
What are file system permissions?
Simply speaking, file system permissions are rules that determine and control who can access and modify files and directories within a file system.
In more detail, a file system is a method used by an operating system that determines how data is stored, organized, managed, and retrieved on storage devices such as hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, etc.
Permissions in a file system define what actions a user can perform on files and directories stored via the file system on the storage device.
The common file system permissions are read, write, and execute access. Since the file system is used by operating systems, a user's access privilege for a file system is determined by the compatibility between the OS and the file system.
The existence of file system permissions ensures data security and flexible user access management for storage devices.
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File system permissions examples
File system permissions for Mac and Windows usually contain read-only and read-write. They vary between operating systems depending on the file system compatibility.
Here's a table of file system permissions examples:
| Common file systems | File system permissions on macOS | File system permissions on Windows |
| NTFS | Read-only | Read-write |
| exFAT | Read-write | Read-write |
| FAT32 | Read-write | Read-write |
| APFS | Read-write | Access denied |
| Mac OS Extended (or HFS+) | Read-write | Access denied |
For Linux, it has three types of permissions: read (r), write (w), and execute (x) for three categories of users, including owner, group, and others.
How to change file system permissions on external hard drives?
The ways to change file system permissions on external hard drives are different among macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Change file system permissions on external hard drives on Mac
- Right-click the external hard drive on the Finder sidebar or the desktop.
- Select Get Info.
- Move to the Sharing & Permissions section.
- Click the privilege option next to your account and change the permission.
Can't change file permissions on external drives on Mac? read: What to do if you can't change permissions on external hard drives on Mac?
Change the file system permissions on external hard drives on Windows
- Right-click the external hard drive on your PC.
- Select Properties and then click the Security tab.
- Click Edit and select the user to change the permissions.
By the way, to change file system permissions on external hard drives on Linux, you need to use the chmod command in Terminal and specify the desired permissions for the owner, group, and others.
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