Ubuntu Read Write External Harddrive Mac - MountPoint Unclear

Question

This is a very basic thing and I cannot get my Ubuntu on mac book pro to write mac external hard drive. It is read only.

I followed the instruction on the website below in parentheses and reached

sudo mount -t hfsplus -o force,rw /dev/sdxy /media/mntpoint

(How to read and write HFS+ journaled external HDD in Ubuntu without access to OS X?) What is /media/mntpoint and what do i put in the code?

Therefore I cannot get my mac external hard drive to write. It can only read.

Please help.

Solution

/media/mntpoint is just a folder on your hard drive where the mount command is going to mount the partition of the drive to. Look on your hard drive and look in the /media folder. You should see other folders in there that are mount points. You can create a folder for that mount point of your choosing.

An example:

mkdir -p /media/mac

the above line would create a folder called mac in the /media folder that you can use to mount your Mac drive to.

So, the mount command would then be:

sudo mount -t hfsplus -o force,rw /dev/sdxy /media/mac

where you would now access the folders on that drive in the /media/mac folder on the drive. Once in that folder you should be the contents of the Mac drive.

If it is already mounted, try the following line to remount the drive:

sudo mount -f hfsplus -o remount,force,rw /dev/sdc2

this is assuming that /dev/sdc2 is your Mac drive partition.

Hope this helps!

Comments

[Terrance]

@jasonchang Did you put the space between /dev/sdc2 and /media/mac?

[Terrance]

@jasonchang The /dev/sdc2 should be the partition and number of the Macintosh drive. The /media/mac is the mount folder on your present drive. Make sure that you're choosing the right drive to mount. Take a look here to list all your partitions of your drives.

[jason chang]

It now says "/dev/sdc2 is already mounted on /media/ubuntu/My Passport for Mac. But when I go to file, new folder, the option is still grayed out

[Terrance]

@jasonchang That is because it has been mounted as Read Only. Updated answer for remount command.

[Terrance]

@jasonchang The updated answer has that info in it. The part of the line that is -o remount,force,rw the rw is Read Write.

[jason chang]

Wow. It works. Howcome you folks are so nice. I spent 1 whole day trying to figure out nautilus so I have root permission. Now with your help, I got hfs to read and write. I can now recover data. Thanks so much.