My Passport won't let me write

I have a new 500 G USB My passport Essentials connected to a MacBook running OS X 10.4.11. The drive shows up in Finder and shows the folder and files that were on the disk when I bought it (yesterday), but I  cannot write to the disk or create new folders. Under Get Info/Ownership and Permissions in Finder, I’m told that  I can only read this disk, and there’s no option to ignore this ownership/permissions restriction. The drive passed the Quick Smart and Quick Drive tests on the Diagnostics page of WD Smartware. Can anyone tell me how I can get to write to this disk?

Greetings,

Can you confirm how the drive is formatted?

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Thanks - that was the key t the problem! The salesman said I’d have to format it for Mac, but I forgot that when I installed the drive, and I (mis)understood from the user guide that it was already formatted for Mac. It was actually formatted for Windows NT, so I reformatted it using Disk Utility, and now I can write to it. Many thanks!

Glad to hear it :smiley:

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Hey, what steps did you take to reformat your drive, using the disk utility? B/c I’m having the same problem. It reads/writes perfectly on Windows. But my Mac only allows me read permission.