Catalina upgrade has made files on external hard drive read only

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Catalina upgrade has made files on external hard drive read only

I have a Toshiba Canvio Connect external hard drive that holds both Windows and Mac files using Tuxera (from what I can detect. This is not my area of expertis at all!) but on upgrading to Catalina the files on the external hard drive have become read only and I can't make changes to a file and save to the external HD. I have to save to iCloud. I've also lost one Excel file in the process. I am now running latest Tuxera on a 'trial' so that I can open the files on the External HD. Am I going to have to buy a new external hard drive and transfer across the contents from the 'old' external HD to make the viewable and alterable on an on-going basis?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 14, 2019 5:32 AM

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Answer 1

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BobTheFisherman

Level 10

81,727 points

Nov 14, 2019 7:12 AM in response to hbsquared53

The issue is due to the fact that your external drive is formatted NTFS for Windows and you are relying on third party apps (Tuxera) for writing to the drive. If you have to use the same drive for both MacOS and and Windows format the drive ExFat. Both MacOS and Windows can read/write an ExFat formatted drive and you will no longer have to rely on a third party app. If you only need to read/write from MacOS then format the drive for Mac.

Caution: If you format the drive you will lose all your data that is on the drive. Copy off the data before formatting.

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Answer 2

hbsquared53 Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 14, 2019 2:41 PM in response to BobTheFisherman

This sounds very useful. Thank you Bob the Fisherman. I think I will get another external hard drive to be on the safe side and back up onto that before attempting to reformat the Toshiba and copy everything back. The Toshiba will then be the back up drive. Is there somewhere useful for me to look for instructions on how to format the Toshiba to ExFat? Also what sort of new external hard drive should I get and particularly which ones are great for use on a 2013 MacAir for both MacOS and Windows (and suitable for backing up from the Toshiba)? I need something portable with about 4 or 5TB and a standard and USB C cable. Some sort of encryption or protection would be useful too. Will I be able to use Time Machine on such an external hard drive?

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Catalina upgrade has made files on external hard drive read only

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