Hi John, You don't mention what type of hard drive format you're using for the external drive or the the operating systems of the other computers you are using. However, I'll give you what I believe is a piece of the answer, and someone who has more hard drives and computers than I do can probably fill you in on the rest. Under unix and linux operating systems file permissions are set at three levels: user, group, and world. You can add users and create accounts so that users belong to the same group, and you can set some file permissions so that members of the same group have access, while the rest of the world does not. So, other user accounts created on the same computer might have access privileges to the hard drive that an account from another computer might not. Furthermore, usually only the owner of a file or directory (or someone with Administrator privileges who logs in as a superuser) can change the permissions on a file. I don't know how you log into your account on the Mac or on the other computer. You could be using your Mac from a regular user account or, more likely, an account with Administrator privileges. When you log into the other computer, which might have a different operating system, you may or may not have access as a superuser. But, in any case, since those files weren't created under the second system, their protection would not generally automatically be set to let them be read by "the outside world". I should add that since I'm the only user of my Mac laptop, I've done limited exploration of changing account permissions from the default categories available through the GUI. I'd have to experiment from command-line arguments in Terminal, and do things the way they would work on other unix and linux systems. However, there's not enough information in your originally posted question to give a detailed answer, since we don't know about the operating system, your original external drive format, and your account access status on the two machines, just as a starter.
HTH Cheers, Esther John J Herzog wrote: > Hi listers, > I have a question about external hard drives and permissions. As a > backup, I would normally copy the folders from my user on the mac, > i.e. documents, videos, etc. to the external hard drive. When > attempting to transfer my files to another computer, I was told I > did not have the permissions to display contents of the folders. > I know how to fix this, as you can plug the drive into the original > mac, press command I, and change the permissions settings from > within that screen. But there's still something I don't understand. > If other computers do not have permission to the user folders on the > drive, how was I able to access my stuff after performing a clean > install of snow leopard? In other words, why didn't I get the error > that I had no permissions when trying to reload things onto the > newly formatted internal hard drive of my macbook? > This puzzles me. Why didn't this error come up with, essentially a > new Mac OS, yet it prevents me from moving things to other computers? > > John > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en > . > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
