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Hello everyone, after I manually closed my MacBook Pro for 5secs due to an application crash, my computer doesn't seem to be able to boot anymore. It executes the progress bar under the apple icon on the screen and after it completes the process, it shuts down. When I press CMD+R, I can see from Disk Utility the Macintosh HD greyed out. What should I do? How can I back up my system or some files?

In general, a Mac with a stable Macintosh HD will boot in as normal, and the Macintosh HD will be available in Disk Utility. Then you are able to access the Operating System and make further operations. However, it's possible that your MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini or MacBook Air boots to black screen of death and its Macintosh HD is greyed out in macOS Recovery mode.

If you are suffering from this issue, remain calm – the Macintosh at least doesn't have any hardware error, as your Mac can still recognize it. That means you have chances to repair it and get all lost data back. In this article, you will learn about how to fix Macintosh HD greyed out in Disk Utility.

How to fix Macintosh HD greyed out in Disk Utility?

You like most people have various reasons to delete a file. However, whatever reason you might have, your Mac might not agree with you. Since the creation of on-screen technologies, terms such as ‘delete,’ ‘erase,’ and ‘format’ has been the go-to options in situations where somebody wanted to get rid of a file or application. Also, to safeguard a system in terms of freeing up space. I have a Macbook Air 2014 and I’m trying to update to the new Mac OS, which is Catalina. When trying to download I get this message, “Downloading installer information to the target volume failed.” I already tried to repair disk permissions and restarting the computer, yet I get the same message. I want to specify the NAS in order to centralize download tasks. So, whether at home on the macmini via a downloading via a browser window, or whether I am on the road via my iPhone / iPad / Macbook Air. My iDevices allow me to DL to the NAS but then I am using Synology's iOS-specific apps and not uTorrent (no iOS version). Weekly Linux Newsletter. Join 75,000 other Linux users and get the latest Linux news and tips in your inbox for FREE.

As your Mac won't boot, all the solutions below are finished in macOS Recovery mode. The first thing is to boot your Mac into macOS Recovery mode: start your Mac and hold down the Command + R keys simultaneously until you see an Apple logo or spinning globe. Then release the keys.

Solution 1: Mount the Macintosh HD

Sometimes, the Macintosh HD greyed out in Disk Utility just because it can't be mounted. In this case, you can try mounting the drive manually. After booting into macOS Recovery mode, select Disk Utility from macOS Utilities and click Continue. Right click the Macintosh HD in Disk Utility and select Mount button.

Solution 2: Repair the Macintosh HD with First Aid

If the Macintosh HD fails to mount manually, you can also check and repair the Macintosh HD with First Aid.

Step 1: Boot into macOS Recovery mode.

Step 2: Select Disk Utility from macOS utilities and click Continue.

Step 3: Select the unmounted Macintosh HD and click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Important: back up your data

Sometimes Disk Utility stopped repairing Macintosh HD, you can then try to reformat to fix Macintosh HD not mounted in Disk Utility. But this process will erase all data stored on the drive. If you don't back up important data, please perform data recovery firstly.

While recovering files from a Mac that won't turn on may be difficult, it is not impossible with a professional data recovery software. iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is a free Mac hard drive data recovery software that can recover lost data from unmountable Macintosh HDs,recover lost data from failed internal hard drives onmacOS Big Sur 11/Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 and OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

Method 1: If you have only one Mac computer

If you have only one Mac computer, please directlyrun iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac in macOS Recovery mode and recover lost data from the unmountable Macintosh HD.

Method 2: If you have two Mac computers

Step 1: Download iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on the healthy Mac computer.

Step 2: Install and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on this Mac computer.

Step 3: Click iBoysoft Data Recovery on the menu bar and then select 'Create Boot Drive'.

Step 4: Insert a USB drive into this healthy Mac computer.

Step 5: Follow the wizard to create a bootable recovery drive on the USB drive.

Step 6: When the creation process completes, you can insert the USB drive into the unbootable Mac computer, and then press the Power button and Option key (⌥) to start the Mac up.

Step 7: Select iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac from the boot options.

Step 8: Follow the wizard to scan for the lost data on the unmounted Macintosh HD.

Step 9: Choose the files you want to get back, and then click Recover button.

Besides, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can recover lost data from formatted drives, recover lost data from unreadable drives, and recover lost data from inaccessible drives, etc. It supports documents, pictures, audios, videos, emails, etc. and different storage devices such as hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc.

Solution 3: Erase the Macintosh HD and reinstall macOS

After recovering data from the Macintosh HD that's greyed out in Disk Utility, you can follow the following steps to fix this issue.

Step 1: Boot your Mac to macOS Recovery mode and select Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities menu.

Insufficient Permissions Can't Download To Usb Macbook Air 13.3

Step 2: Select the unmountable Macintosh HD from the side bar.

Step 3: Click Erase from the top.

Step 4: Setup the required information (i.e. Name, Scheme, Format, etc.) to reformat the disk and click Done when finished.

Step 5: Go back to macOS Utilities screen, select Reinstall macOS and follow the wizard.

Still have questions?

Summary: Two methods to change Seagate external hard drives from read-only back to read-write, so that you can edit, delete, and rename files on this Seagate external hard drive. Also, if a Seagate external hard drive is read-only or files are locked on Mac due to NTFS format, you can use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to mount it in read-write mode on Mac.

When you plug a Seagate external hard drive into your Mac, one of the worst things would be that you find your Seagate hard drive is read-only. Your photos, videos, and other files you saved from a Windows PC could be locked. Or your Seagate external drive could be write-protected.

Generally, there are three reasons for Seagate external HDD being read-ony on Mac:

• 1. Use NTFS driver for Mac to write to NTFS Seagate external hard drives
• 2. Change the permissions from read-only to read-write Seagate external hard drive
• 3. Repair disk corruption that makes Seagate external hard drive read-only

Are you facing such disk problem right now? Well, you are not the only one.

'I'm having a problem using my Seagate external hard drive. I only have permission to read files on my external hard drive, but I am not allowed to write or edit files on the drive when using Mac OS. Why this happened and how to fix Seagate external hard drive read-only on Mac?'

You might have trouble backing up or adding files to Seagate external hard drives on Mac. But it's not necessarily because the disk is locked but some other reasons. For example, the Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only on Mac.

In this article, we introduced three possible reasons for disk being read-only on Mac, and you can find solutions to change the external drives from read-only accordingly.

Why is your Seagate external hard drive read only on Mac?

You may be wondering why my Seagate external hard drive is read-only. In fact, read-only Seagate external hard drive results from various reasons. It could be the NTFS format that makes this trouble since NTFS is not writable on Mac. Generally, there are three possible reasons:

• 1. The Seagate external hard drive is NTFS formatted.
• 2. You don't have permissions to access the Seagate external hard drive
• 3. The Seagate external hard drive has some disk errors

In the following part, we'll go into details about how to fix the Seagate external hard drive read-onli issue in different situations.

Case 1: The Seagate external hard drive is NTFS formatted

Most Seagate external drives are read-only on Mac because they are pre-fomatted with Windows NT file system (NTFS) by the manufacturer. So your Seagate HDD is read only on Mac, which affects Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch, Portable drive, and Slim.

However, macOS disabled the NTFS write support by default. If you connect an NTFS formatted external hard drive to your Mac, you will find that files on this disk will be locked or show as read-only. You can only read but can't add files to this Seagate external hard drive on Mac.

How to check if your Seagate hard drive is NTFS formatted on Mac?

• 1. Open the Finder and click Go at the upper right of your desktop, then choose Utilities.
• 2. Find Disk Utility and open it.
• 3. Select your Seagate external hard drive in the left sidebar of Disk Utility.
• 4. Then you can see Windows NT File System on the right.
• 5. You can click the Info icon at the upper right to check if this disk is writable.

Solution: Use NTFS for Mac to write to Seagate external hard drives on Mac

In this situation, what you need is not to unlock the Seagate external hard drive but a NTFS for Mac driver. Many people would think about converting NTFS to APFS or formatting the Seagate drive for Mac to make it compatible with macOS. However, the truth is that you can fix the Seagate external hard drive read-only issue without formatting, i.e. you don't have to lose your files on this drive.

Alternatively, you can download NTFS for Mac software to enable NTFS drive write support on Mac with no fuss. There are a great number of NTFS for Mac in the market, and iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is used here as an example.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is a handy disk management tool, which can help you mount NTFS formatted external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. on Mac with write support. This NTFS drive mounter is also compatible with macOS 11 (Big Sur), 10.15 (Catalina), macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra).

How to use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to write to NTFS Seagate external hard drive on Mac?

• 1. Download and install iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your Mac, then restart the computer.
• 2. Launch this NTFS driver for Mac and connect the read-only Seagate external hard drive to Mac.
• 3. Then, you can fully write and copy data to the Seagate external hard drive on Mac after the drive is mounted successfully.

Aside from being an NTFS for Mac driver, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is also a wonderful tool to manage files on NTFS external drives. It lets users open, monut, repair, and erase NTFS drives on Mac natively and seamlessly.

Case 2: You don't have permissions to access the Seagate external hard drive

If your Seagate hard drive denies your access or restricts you to read-only activities, there is likely an permission issue. Being a multiuser operating system, macOS sets up access permissions for all files and folders on the system, including external drives.

Solution: Change permissions on Seagate external hard drive

To fix the read-only Seagate external hard drive issue, you need to regain full access. You can ignore the ownership or change the sharing and permissions of this disk in the Finder by following the below steps.

• 1. Select Seagate external hard drive on your desktop or in the Finder sidebar, and then press Command + I to get information of the drive.
• 2. Scroll to the bottom of this list and click on the triangle that is at the left side of the Sharing & Permissions tab.
• 3. Click on the lock icon at the right bottom and type in the password to unlock this tab.
• 4. Check the box to Ignore ownership on this volume, or you can toggle it off and then on if it's already enabled.
• 5. Click on the gear button and choose Apply to enclosed items… to save your changes.

Then you can go to check if your Seagate external hard drive is read-only still. If not, you will be able to write to this disk.

But if you can't access the Seagate external hard drive as it's locked still. Well, the disk may be really locked by certain programs, especially for Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch. Then you need to unlock the password protection or hardware encryption with Seagate Secure software.

Case 3: The Seagate external hard drive has some disk errors

If your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only not for the reasons above, you may need to have a check if there is any inner disk error. Some formatting errors will make an external hard drive read-only on Mac. If this is the cause, usually you will see a warning in Disk Utility that states it is only being mounted in read-only mode.

Click to see more errors of the Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Windows.

Solution 1: Fix read-only Seagate external hard drive in Disk Utility

Fortunately, there is a built-in tool called First Aid that can check and repair some minor disk errors. When your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only due to logical disk problems, you can use First Aid to repair it then.

Here is the guidance to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive with Disk Utility:

• 1. Open Disk Utility.
• 2. Select the read-only Seagate external hard drive on the left window.
• 3. Click First Aid in the top center and choose Run to repair this disk.

Solution 2: Reformat Seagate external hard drive

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However, if Disk Utility fails to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive, the last thing you can try to remove write protection from Seagate external hard drives would be reformatting. Reformatting will assign a new file system to this disk, consequently, the Seagate external hard drive issue could be fixed.

But before you go ahead to erase this disk, you should know that reformatting will wipe the files on this hard drive. Thus, you are advised to check if you have a copy of data back in the first place , or you can recover lost data from this external hard drive with iBoysoft Mac data recovery to avoid data loss.

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If you're sure that you have data backup in hand, you can proceed to reformat this read-only external hard drive with the following tutorial.

• 1. Open Disk Utility as you did before.
• 2. Select the read-only Seagate external hard drive in the left sidebar.
• 3. Click the Erase button in the top center of Disk Utility.
• 4. Fill in name, format, and scheme when the pop-up asks.
• 5. Click Erase to confirm this operation.

A final note

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Besides Seagate external hard drives, Toshiba, WD, Samsung, or other brands' external hard drives will come across the read-only problem. It is common to see people complaining WD My Passport external hard drives suddenly became read-only on Mac. You can also use these solutions to fix this problem. What's more, an NTFS formatted WD external hard drive won't work on your PS4 console for gaming as well. But if you are unable to fix it with the solutions suggested above, you can only send it to local disk repair store for help, but that will cost a lot usually.