We can apply certain changes to our devices, especially what we will use externally, that is, those that we will connect to our PC, such as hard drives, USB memories, etc. In the following article, we will show you what to do if you want to change the permissions of an external hard drive on a Mac.
We already know that the adjustments we make regarding permissions will determine who can make changes or see certain information in our files, folders and internal or external drives.
This is very easy to do on Mac computers, for example, you can give permissions to users who share or connect to your Mac, to see the files, but cannot modify it.
This is usually a task that you should know if you are the person who manages the permissions on your computer, but if you do not know how to do it, do not worry with this tutorial you will know what you should do. As we have done in another article that could show you the steps to follow to change the attributes of a read-only hard drive in Windows.
How to change the permissions of an external hard drive on a Mac
Next, we will show you what you must do to be able to assign permissions to an external hard drive that we will connect to an Apple Mac. These steps work equally for individual users as well as for groups. The first thing we must do is connect the external hard drive to the computer, then you must select it and choose the File option.
The next step is to click on the Get information option, the Sharing and permissions option should be visible here. If not, you must then click on the triangle to display a menu and here you will find that option. Then you go to the padlock icon and you are going to click on it to unlock it.
The next step is to add the following information, administrator name and password, then you must choose or select one of the names found in the column. Then you must choose one of the privileges in the menu, read and write, if you choose this option it will allow users to open the disk and modify its content.
Different options to change the permissions of a hard disk
The Write only option, if you choose this alternative you can only record information in it, without having access to open it. And finally the No access option, where access to the disk is blocked, whenever you want you can undo the changes you have made in the administrator privileges, entering the Sharing and permissions section.
Once the window opens, go directly to the Action option, select it and in the menu, you must choose the Restore changes option. If what you want is to grant permissions to all the items on a disk, you must do the following, choose the disk you have connected, then click on File and then on Obtain information, where you can also recover information if the disk has been damaged
The next step is to click on the padlock icon to unlock it and enter the Administrator’s name and password.
Then in the menu, you are going to select the Action option and find and choose the Apply option on all items. The next one is when you want to change the owner of an item, in these cases, you must do the following, first, you must choose the item and then File and then Obtain information, click on the padlock so that it is unlocked.
The next step is to enter a name as administrator and add a password, if this name is not in the list, you must do the following. Go to the Add option, so you can enter the new name.
After you have done this step, select this name in the column, click Action and then choose the option Make __ as the owner.
As you can always undo the changes you have made, for this, you go to the Sharing and permissions section. Then click on the Action option and finally choose the Restore changes option.
And so we come to the end of this tutorial, which explains in detail the steps you must take to change the permissions of an external hard drive on a Mac.