macbook pro external hard drive read only

It is hard to say, but you try checking the health of the WD drive by running DriveDX and install the special USB driver so that DriveDX can communicate properly with the WD drive. I realise that we could be discussing how many angels we can get on the head of a pin when all the OP wants is a solution, but do you have any thoughts on the underlying matter? But it seems odd that one machine shows the unit working perfectly and the other shows it to, well, not be. And following your advice to take a copy of the data on the drive and to reformat it will likely remove the problem, and can be done on that machine, too. The OP says ' I have tried to connect the disk to a MacBook Air (High Sierra 10.13.6) and it shows the disk works well on that system.' This suggests that the data is accessible, which is a good thing. The MacOS Extended file system is an older and much more stable filesystem than is the new APFS filesystem.Īfter erasing the 'WD My Passport' drive, you can transfer your files back to it. Make sure to erase the physical drive which will require you to click on 'View' within Disk Utility and selecting 'Show All Devices' so that the physical drive shows up in the left pane of Disk Utility so you can select it. Unfortunately there are currently no third party utilities capable of repair an APFS volume since Apple has not released the necessary information yet.Įrase the 'WD My Passport.' drive as GUID partition MacOS Extended (Journaled). It appears macOS is mounting the external drive as read only since the APFS file system is damaged.

If Disk Utility cannot repair the APFS volume, then you will need to copy the contents to another drive so you can erase your external 'WD My Passport.' drive.

Macbook pro external hard drive read only