Fix USB Drive Went into Read-only Mode on Mac

My USB drive went into read-only mode and I cannot figure out the causes. I thought it to be from the third-party NTFS driver that I used to enable NTFS drives to be writable on my Mac. However, I can write to my HDD Toshiba NTFS drive on my Mac. I still changed the third-party NTFS for Mac but got the same result. I tried the "Get Info" option, the strange thing is, I cannot even see the permissions. I prepared to format the drive but failed as the USB is read-only. It does not let me do that. I tried Disk Utility - no result either. Can you give me some suggestions? Thanks a lot.

Best Answered by

Connie Yang

Answered on Wednesday, November 22, 2023

I can see that your USB drive is NTFS formatted from your details. NTFS is not compatible with macOS. Thus, that's the reason that you cannot change permissions on an NTFS drive on your Mac.

You say that your NTFS-formatted HDD drive is read-write available on your Mac and you've changed another NTFS driver but still can't write to the NTFS-formatted USB. Can you tell me which NTFS for Mac you use? Some NTFS for Mac applications are not well-designed. They may contain a certain potential bug that makes your USB drive go into read-only mode on your Mac.

Moreover, did you format your USB drive to NTFS on a Windows PC? If yes, this may be the cause. Drives formatted in Windows sometimes cannot work properly on Mac. You can reformat your USB to exFAT on a Windows computer first. Then, connect it to your Mac to see if it can be written to. If you insist on using NTFS, you can use an advanced NTFS driver like iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to enable formatting the USB drive to NTFS again on your Mac. Then, the NTFS USB in read-only mode on a Mac issue can be fixed.

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iBoysoft NTFS for Mac

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