Changing read-write permissions on my external Seagate hard drive

Question

I have an external hard drive (Seagate Free Agent) that I normally download files to.

I have a dual boot Ubuntu 11.10 along with Windows 7-64 bit.

I can read all of my files in my external HD perfectly, but when I attempt to do a download of a file to this drive, I get an "unable to write because of read only" disk error. When I attempt to change the permissions of the disk through the "Properties" bar, I still get an error that I don't have the proper permissions to change permissions.

I have heard of "mounting" the disk, but I am afraid of mistakenly reformatting and destroying all the data that I have currently on that drive. How best should I safely change the permissions on that drive so that I can write and download files to the drive??

The drive is listed under /dev/sdc1.

http://askubuntu.com/q/88080/46312 will get you there – Ringtail Mar 12 '12 at 03:46 — Ringtail, Mar 12 '12 at 03:46
What file system is being used on the external drive? – James Henstridge Mar 12 '12 at 03:49 — James Henstridge, Mar 12 '12 at 03:49

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 31 '12 at 02:39

2

I found the answer to my issue by opening a terminal and

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Worked for me and restored my access to my USB stick.

edited Oct 31 '12 at 02:39

Ringtail

16,127

answered Oct 31 '12 at 02:18

Ralph

21

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 22 '12 at 02:42

0

type this on a terminal

gksu nautilus

¡¡¡WARNING!! be very cautious with this command its like super-god command.

it will open nautilus file manager, then go to the HDD and right click on the permissions tab and change the permissions; once done type

exit

on the terminal and or close nautilus; remember to this ¡please!.

another thing that may help is to install this

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

and then reboot your machine.

edited Mar 22 '12 at 02:42

Ringtail

16,127

answered Mar 22 '12 at 02:25

gabriel rojas delc

1

2

Typing exit in the Terminal won't do anything while Nautilus is still running. – Eliah Kagan May 26 '12 at 18:45

Changing read-write permissions on my external Seagate hard drive

2 Answers2