To troubleshoot an issue with Windows 10 (especially boot-related issues), it can be handy to boot to Windows 10 that is not installed on a Boot Camp partition. It is relatively straightforward to create a bootable USB Flash drive to boot to the Windows 10 installer, and then open up a DOS prompt for troubleshooting.
- How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air Drive
- How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air Keyboard Cover
- How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air Pro
- How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air 2
What is needed
Change the USB-to-Mac connection way. Have you tried to restart your Mac once or twice? By default, Mac starts from its built-in hard disk, but a startup disk can be any storage device that contains bootable contents that compatible with your Mac. For example, if you install macOS or Microsoft Windows on a USB drive, your Mac can recognize that drive as a startup disk. This guide provides 2 ways to boot a Mac from a USB flash drive.
- USB Flash drive (8 GB or larger recommended)
- Windows 10 Installer ISO for Windows 10
Preparation
Adobe Flash will be going away soon, but for now, you can easily install and enable Adobe Flash Player on a Mac computer using a Safari browser.
All the preparation is done in macOS on the Mac that is having an issue booting Windows. It is important to use this Mac since it will be used to identify the correct Windows drivers.
USB Flash Drive
The USB Flash drive must be formatted as exFAT.
- Insert an 8GB or larger flash drive into a USB port on the Mac
- In Disk Utility, format the Flash drive as exFAT. Quit Disk Utility after this operation completes.
Boot Camp Driver
Open Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder, and download the current Windows Support Software from the Action menu. Save the Windows Support Software to your desktop or other location, but do not save directly to the USB Flash Drive.
Windows Install Media
Download the current install media from the Microsoft website. Windows is not going to be installed, but the install media will give access to the command line tools in Windows. Select the version of Windows that is closes to the version of Windows installed on the Mac (Windows 8, Windows 10). It does not matter what edition of Windows is used since Windows is not going to be installed.
Create Recovery USB Flash Drive
To create the USB Flash drive, follow these steps:
- Mount the Windows ISO that was downloaded from Microsoft. To mount the ISO, double click on the ISO in the Finder.
- Drag all the files and folders from the mounted ISO to the USB Flash Drive.
- Drag the contents of the Windows Support Software to the USB Flash Drive.
- If there is not an AutoUnattend.xml at the top level of the drive (as shown below), download AutoUnattend.xml, unzip it, and add it to the drive. AutoUnattend.xml provides the location of the $WinPEDriver$ folder to load the drivers during boot.
- The 2018 MacBook Air (and potentially Macs after that) have cannot load the IntelMEI driver and give a “Windows Setup could not install one or more boot-critical drivers. To install Windows, make sure that the drivers are valid, and restart the installation”. On the USB Flash drive, open the $WinPEDriver$ and remove the IntelMEI folder.
Once the Flash drive has been created, it should look like this:
The $WinPEDriver$ folder is important because the $WinPEDriver$ folder contains the drivers for Windows to boot successfully from the USB Flash drive and the hardware on that Mac.
Boot from the USB Flash drive
To inject the drivers, the Mac must be booted from the USB Flash drive.
- Insert the USB Flash drive into an available USB port on the Mac
- Reboot while holding the option key.
- Select EFI volume in the startup selector.
If Windows does not boot from the USB Flash drive after showing the Windows logo, you may have to run the following command to tell the firmware to boot the windows installer from the USB flash drive. This has been observed on the late-2014 Mac Mini but may affect other models as well. To set the variable:
- Disable SIP by booting to the recovery partition.
- Boot back to macOS and open Terminal. Run the follow command and enter the admin password when prompted:
sudo nvram InstallWindowsUEFI=1
Insert the USB flash drive if it is not inserted, reboot, and select the EFI volume from the startup selector.
Note the InstallWindowsUEFI variable is cleared at each reboot, so you will to set it again if you do not select the USB Flash Drive.
Command Prompt and Mapped Drives
When Windows 10 starts up, it will prompt for installation of Windows 10. To open up a DOS window, press Fn-Shift-F10 (or just shift-F10) or click Repair Computer->Troubleshoot->Command Prompt (if available).
Once in the command prompt, there are usually 3 drive letters available: X, C, and D.
- X: This is Windows that you are booted into in memory. The files from the boot.wim on the flash drive are copied to memory and then booted to.
- C: Boot Camp partition
- D: The USB Flash drive
Running Utilities
Within the Windows command prompt, you can run utilities on the Boot Camp partition.
Video
![How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31vfAKpXZCL._SY300_QL70_.jpg)
An incompatible file system, faulty permission settings, and unexpected formatting error are all likely to cause your external hard drive to show up as 'Read Only' on your Mac. Luckily, there are solutions to these problems, either by formatting the device, changing settings, or repairing your device. Besides, if you get your data lost during the problem-solving process, you can retrieve your data with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. Try these tips without worries!
Don't worry when your external hard drive displays as read-only on Mac. This page includes 3 reliable solutions that can assist you in removing the 'read-only' error from your external hard drive, making it readable again on Mac. Pick up any method below to make your device accessible without losing any data now:
Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
---|---|
Fix 1. Reformat External Hard Drive | Open 'Applications' > 'Utilities' > Launch 'Disk Utility' to 'Erase' external drive > Restore formatted data..Full steps |
Fix 2. Ignore Permissions | Right-click external drive > 'Get Info' > 'Sharing & Permissions' > Check 'Ignore ownership on..'..Full steps |
Fix 3. Repair Drive Errors | Open Disk Utility > Select the external hard drive and click 'First Aid' > Click 'Run'..Full steps |
SymptomsThe External Hard Drive Shows Up as 'Read Only' on Mac, Help!
'Hi there, do you know how to make the external hard drive accessible again when it shows as 'Read Only' on Mac computer? I'm having this problem that my Seagate external hard drive suddenly turned to read-only this morning when I connected it to Mac. I could only read and view saved data on the drive. But get no access to use the data on my external hard drive. If you have any clues to get permissions to access the read-only external hard drive on Mac, please tell me. Thanks very much.'
If you right-click your external storage device, select 'Get Info', and see 'You can only read' at the bottom of the info window, you are encountering one of the commonest problems with an external hard drive. When your external hard drive or other external storage devices show up as 'Read Only' on your Mac, you can:
- Open the drive and view the files
- copy files from the external storage drive
You can't:
- Copy files to the device
- Delete files from the external drive
When you can't use your external storage devices normally, it could be quite annoying and frustrating for the problem not only represents a threat to your work efficiency but also shows the possibility of data loss.
ReasonsWhy Is Your External Hard Drive Read-Only on Mac
Why can you only read the external hard drive that is connected to your Mac? There are three possible reasons.
The File System Is NTFS
Graphics software free download for windows 7 32bit. Right-click your hard disk and select 'Get Info'. If you find your external hard drive is NTFS format, that's what the cause is. The incompatibility of the file system is the main cause of the error-external hard drive 'Read Only' on Mac. NTFS is a file system that is optimal for Windows-based computer. Although the Mac operating system allows you to read the files on external hard drive, you can't write files to it because the way that NTFS writes data to the device is incompatible with the way of macOS doing it. (Go to the Fix.)
The Permission Settings Is Not Ignored
An external hard drive is subject to the access permission set up by OS X for all files and folders on the system. When you use the device on another computer with a different OS, the permission settings with it may not be recognized or prevent access to the files on the hard disk. (Go to the Fix.)
The Hard Drive has Formatting Errors
Another common cause for the external hard drive 'Read Only' problem on Mac is the formatting errors of the storage device itself. If you see a warning says the device is only being mounted in read-only mode while connecting, your hard disk is diagnosed to have formatting errors that prevent you from writing files to it. (Go to the Fix.)
Identify the cause that leads to the 'Read Only' error on your Mac from the information above, then follow the corresponding solution to solve the problem with ease.
FixesHow Can You Solve the External Hard Drive 'Read-only' Problem on Your Mac
Based on different reasons, there are three solutions to the problem.
Fix 1: Reformat the External Hard Drive
If your external hard drive is read-only on your Mac due to its NTFS file system, you can easily fix it by reformatting the device to a Mac-compatible format with the built-in Disk Utility on Mac. Before that, remember to back up your external hard drive quickly with a highly-efficient data backup software since the formatting will erase all the files on the device.
How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air Drive
Step 1: Launch 'Disk Utility'.
- Head to 'Applications' > 'Utilities'.
- Or tap 'Command + Space' and type Disk Utility.
Step 2: In the list of available drives on the left, choose the problematic external hard drive. Then click the 'Erase' option in the main window.
Step 3: Choose a proper file system and rename your hard disk. (Both APFS and Mac OS Extended file system are Mac-exclusive. Thus, if you want your external hard drive to be both Mac and PC compatible, choose MS-DOS, also known as FAT, or ExFAT instead.)
Step 4: How to take screen shot macbook. Click Erase to reformatting your external hard drive.
Wait for the reformatting process to complete and then go to the information window, this time you will see the 'You can only read' has changed to 'You can read and write', which means you can read and write the drive on your Mac normally.
Generally speaking, when a storage device shows up as read-only, you can still copy files off of it. If you cannot view or see all saved data on the drive, don't worry. After you format it, you can use the Professional Mac hard drive recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac to get back your lost data on the drive with simple clicks:
Step 1. Select the disk location (it can be an internal HDD/SSD or a removable storage device) where you lost data and files. Click the 'Scan' button.
Step 2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will immediately scan your selected disk volume and display the scanning results on the left pane.
Step 3. In the scan results, select the file(s) and click the 'Recover Now' button to have them back.
Fix 2: Ignore Permissions
If you are sure the problem is caused by the permission settings, you just need to ignore the permissions to solve the 'Read Only' external hard drive problem on your Mac.
Step 1: Right-click your external hard drive shown on your Mac and select 'Get Info'.
Step 2: Expand the 'Sharing & Permissions' section, then click the lock to authenticate.
Step 3: Check 'Ignore ownership on this volume'.
Fix 3: Check and Repair Hard Drive errors
How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air Keyboard Cover
If there is formatting error on your external hard drive that makes the device read-only, you can use Disk Utility to check the errors and repair the external storage device.
How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air Pro
Step 1: Go to 'Disk Utility'.
- Head to 'Applications' > 'Utilities'.
- Or tap 'Command + Space' and type Disk Utility.
How To Open Flash Drive On Macbook Air 2
Step 2: Highlight the read-only external hard drive, click 'First Aid' in the top center, then click 'Run'.