Using My Passport drive for Time Machine backups, but I can't save other files to it

[bill_wed]

I recently purchased a 4TB My Passport Drive and use it for Time Machine backups on my Mac. I cannot save other files to it because I only have Read access, even though I have Administrator rights. Is this because it’s encrypted?

Thanks.

[kumburle.pradeep]

Hi @bill_wed

Have you checked our knowledge base articles?
(Support for Western Digital Hard Drives | Western Digital)

Have you opened a Support Case?
If not, contact Western Digital Technical Support for assistance.
(https://www.westerndigital.com/en-in/support/contact-us)

[treylen]

You can install third-party software like Paragon NTFS or Tuxera NTFS, which will allow you to write to NTFS drives from macOS.

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[SadioMane]

It sounds like your My Passport drive is likely formatted in NTFS, which is read-only by default on macOS. If it is indeed encrypted, that could also be preventing write access. To solve this, you could either reformat the drive to “APFS” or “Mac OS Extended”for full read/write access, or use third-party software like “Paragon NTFS” or iBoysoft NTFS“ to enable write functionality on NTFS drives.