Okay so I’ve had this EXACT same problem with my last passport. I called tech support but they guys were basically clueless and just sent me a new disk. This is what the message say when the disk loads: “MAC OS X can’t repair “My Passpot” You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it.”
Then… When I try to back it up: “Files can’t be backed up because it appears to be ‘read only’ You may need to repiair or reformat the disk using Disk ultility.” I tried going into Ultility but it just told me it can’t reformat the disk.
So basically I can still acess my files already on the drive but I can’t save anything to it. Has anyone else had this problem with their Passport? Am I doing something wrong? I find it extremly odd that it has happened two times already.
is it possible that you corrupted some of the files on the drive? If so, then you are left with only reformatting. make sure that you are not just pulling the cable without safely removing the drive.
and as Joe says, it can definitely cause corruption. usually the reason why people think that they’re getting away with it, is because they’re only reading from the drive before they pull the plug. but if you are copying files to the drive, and then pull the plug, any data still in the buffer will cause data corruption. that’s pretty much guaranteed. one minute everything is there and the next it’s gone.
you can repartition and format the drive, and it will be good as new. you don’t have to get a new drive when this happens. you just have to make sure you have your data backed up.
Jumping in here as I’m having similar issues with my WD My Book Studio. I’ve got 5 partitions on it and one of them is giving me the error message that the original poster has described. It’s turned into a read-only partition.
In order to back up this drive, I’ll have to get another to back it up to, and then the entire corrupt drive will have to be reformatted because of the partitions, correct? In other words, there is no way to just reformat one partition, it’s all or nothing?
Also, since all the files are read-only in this partition now, how is reformatiing the drive going to remedy that? Once those files are backed up to a new drive, they’re going to be backed up as read-only and then transferred to the reformatted drive the same way. Can that ever be repaired back to normal?
I did notice that a lot of files in this partition now have “dated created” dates of “12/31/69” which is completely wrong.
