Hi there, I have purchased a WD my passport SSD 2TB to use as a backup drive for my MacBook. I have installed it with WD password protection. Time Machine works well (SSD seems to have been re-formated to APFS.) But I can’t access the SSD to use as a “normal” additional drive. Properties say that I only have read access. How can I change this and add additional folders, besides using the SSD for Time Machine. Thanks!
Hi @hwg1964,
Please refer to the article WD External Drive Out of Box Format & Operating System Compatibility:
Thanks for the reply @Keerti_01 ! The documents suggests to re-format the “my Passport SSD” to HFS+/MacOS extended, if you want to use it for Time Machine backups. I did so successfully and could also write data on it, BUT when assigning the SSD to Time Machine it says that TM will prepare/erase the SSD for TM back up use. After that I can use TM and the file type is now APFS again and I cannot write on the SSD. Time Machine works. So it appears that OS Monterey requires APFS for TM and your solution doesn’t reflect the lates OS release?
Hi,
I appreciate that you have performed the troubleshooting steps.
Please contact the WD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask
When your external drive or any storage drive shows up as “Read Only” on your mac, then you might be encountering a very common problem with the hard drive. In such a situation, the user can open and view the files on a drive but cannot copy or move files to the storage drive. The possible reasons for this issue could be:
- External drive is NTFS formatted
- Disk permission changed as “Read Only”
- External drive is corrupted
However, the issue can be fixed using below DIY methods:
- Reformat the external drive
- Change/Ignore permissions on an external drive
- Repair external drive with disk utility’s first aid
Hope this will help you fix the issue!
