WD Elements Drive locked

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I cannot seem to create new folders or write to the WD Elements drive. There’s a litre x in the left bottom corner of my window which seems to indicate it’s locked. In the info window all permissions are granted though.

Any ideas?

2

HI @King_kong,

For a hard drive to be able to be read from and written to on both a Windows and macOS computer, it must be formatted to ExFATor FAT32 file format.

Please refer to the article How to Format a Drive for Use on Both Windows and macOS Using exFat or FAT32

Please contact the WD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting:https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

3

The “x” symbol in the left bottom corner of the window indicates that the folder or drive is locked or read-only. This means that you do not have the necessary permissions to make changes to the folder or drive.

Even though the permissions are granted in the info window, it’s possible that the folder or drive is still locked or read-only. You may want to check the ownership of the folder or drive and make sure that you have the necessary permissions to modify it.

To check the ownership and permissions of the folder or drive on a Mac:

  1. Right-click on the folder or drive and select “Get Info” from the drop-down menu.
  2. In the Info window, scroll down to the “Sharing & Permissions” section.
  3. Check the “Privilege” column to see if you have “Read & Write” access.
  4. If you do not have “Read & Write” access, click on the lock icon in the bottom right corner and enter your administrator password to unlock the settings.
  5. Change the permissions to “Read & Write” for your user account.

If you are using a Windows computer, you can check the ownership and permissions of the folder or drive by following these steps:

  1. Right-click on the folder or drive and select “Properties” from the drop-down menu.
  2. Click on the “Security” tab.
  3. Check the “Group or user names” section to see if your user account is listed.
  4. If your user account is not listed, click on the “Edit” button and add your user account.
  5. Select your user account and check the “Allow” box next to “Full control” to grant yourself full permissions.

Once you have adjusted the permissions and ownership settings, try creating a new folder or writing to the drive again to see if the issue has been resolved.