I got a new MacBook Air and am using the external hard drive I previously used on my old MacBook Air to store work files. However, on the new computer, I can only read files from the hard drive but not write anything. I’ve tried modifying permissions via “Get Info” on the old and new MacBook Air, but it didn’t work. Can anyone help me solve this issue?
Your external hard drive might be NTFS (or another file system not supported by macOS). In this case, you can only read the drive on your MacBook but cannot write to it. You can check the file system format of the drive in Disk Utility.
If it’s formatted as NTFS, you can use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac. Download iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, connect the NTFS external drive to your Mac, open the drive in the iBoysoft NTFS for Mac application, and you’ll be able to read and write to it on your Mac.
To get more information, you can read: How to enable NTFS write on Mac?
This issue may caused by the file system format of the external hard drive incompatible with the new MacBook Air. You can reformat the drive in Disk Utility to APFS (for macOS only) or exFAT (compatible with both macOS and Windows).
Note: Formatting will erase all data on the drive, so make sure to back up your data before proceeding!