How to change permission on external hard drive in Ubuntu

Question

I formatted my External USB hard drive(466 GB) and now is not letting me make changes to it, like adding or deleting files. I can only read files.

I tried different solutions but nothing helped.

Sys. de fichiers Type     Taille Utilisé Dispo Uti% Monté sur
udev             devtmpfs   1.9G    8.0K  1.9G   1% /dev
tmpfs            tmpfs      375M    1.4M  374M   1% /run
/dev/sda1        ext4        18G     12G  5.2G  69% /
none             tmpfs      4.0K       0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
none             tmpfs      5.0M       0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none             tmpfs      1.9G     49M  1.8G   3% /run/shm
none             tmpfs      100M     48K  100M   1% /run/user
/dev/sda6        ext4       268G    244G   10G  97% /home
/dev/sdb1        fuseblk    466G    156M  466G   1% /mnt/usb-WD_Elements_10A8_575842314134334139333135-0:0-part1

after using mount command the output is:

/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /run/user type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=104857600,mode=0755)
none on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw)
/dev/sda6 on /home type ext4 (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
systemd on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,none,name=systemd)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=samsung-toshiba-r)
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/usb-WD_Elements_10A8_575842314134334139333135-0:0-part1 type fuseblk (ro,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)
gvfsd-fuse on /root/.gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev)

update 02: The output now is

/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /run/user type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=104857600,mode=0755)
none on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw)
/dev/sda6 on /home type ext4 (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
systemd on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,none,name=systemd)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=samsung-toshiba-r)
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/usb-WD_Elements_10A8_575842314134334139333135-0:0-part1 type fuseblk (ro,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)

Solution

Your disk is known to the system as /dev/sdb1 and is mounted read-only (the ro between brackets). Moreover, it is NTFS (which the mount command reports as fuseblk).

Unmount your disk and re-mount it as read-write, like this:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1
sudo mkdir /mnt/mydisk
sudo mount -t ntfs -o rw /dev/sdb1 /mnt/mydisk 

This will work unless your external disk has a hardware switch to set it to read-only, which is the case with e.g. many SD-cards.

Comments

[Jos]

It is probably not formatted with an ext4 file system, but NTFS or FAT which doesn't support permissions. What is the output of mount?

[ralfriend ralbio]

how to show the output of mount?

[Jos]

Type the command "mount" in a terminal, press enter, edit your question and paste the output into it.

[George Udosen]

Open a terminal and type mount and copy and paste it into your question

[ralfriend ralbio]

i add what appears after the mount command

[ralfriend ralbio]

Thank you for your proposition but unfortunately, it didn't work

[Jos]

What is the output of the mount command?

[ralfriend ralbio]

the output of the 'mount' is mentioned in the update 02

[ralfriend ralbio]

true what you said its was formatted with the ntfs file system of MS Windows, i tried your proposition but always the same result I am not allowed to write or delete

[ralfriend ralbio]

please, what type of commands that I need to use??? (to avoid mistakes)

[dMatija]

for example. when I click on my external HDD and: cd /media/$USER/external_01 and do ll on that HDD I got this: drwxrwxrwx 1 ralexander ralexander 20K srp 26 01:20 external_01 ralexander is my $USER and my group name. if you output says root root then you can read and write only as root. you need to change owner and group to that you default user $ chown -r /path/to/external and if that work then is ok. If not then check you RWX permissions $ chmod rwx /path/to/external i'm kinda in hurry so hope u get point =\