Difficulty
Difficult
Steps
3
Time Required
00:05:00
Missing Images
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Introduction
If you have an external drive which may be shared between users and computers, you may find switching off drive ownership may be helpful. However, the easy checkbox in the 'Get Info' window which allows you to do this, may not always be present. In these cases, you can switch it off using Terminal.
Beware!
This guide does change permissions on hard drives, so if you have existing data on your hard drive, please ensure that it is backed up before modifying permissions, as there is always a chance of you losing access to your data.
This method is best performed on a blank disk before any data is placed onto it.
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PLEASE READ THE BEWARE NOTE AT THE TOP OF THIS GUIDE
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Terminal can be found in Applications > Utilities or Launchpad
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Remember to not include "quotation marks"
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This will then present you with a list of drives and volumes currently connected to your Mac
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Identify the drive you want to modify and make a note of its drive number, which should look like this: disk1
The command given does not display a list of drives and volumes. The correct command to list discs and volumes is:
>diskutil list
Bryn Parrott - Open Reply
Good point. Have changed.
Adrian -
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Remember to not include "quotation marks"
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Replace the X in diskX with the number you noted from the previous step
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If you want to reenable disk ownership, you can change "disableOwnership" in the above command to "enableOwnership"
When a volume has ownership enabled, that command does not work. The response given to that command is:
sudo diskutil disableOwnership disk6
Error encountered disabling user/group ownership: A disk with a mount point is required (-69854)
(base) brynparrott@Bryns-MacBook-Pro ~ % sudo diskutil disableOwnership disk6s2
Error encountered disabling user/group ownership: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-69860)
So, I'm on my own, I am trying other commands available in Diskutil to see if I can find out how to correct the problem.
Bryn Parrott - Open Reply
Although I am even less familiar with this process with FAT32, it may be worth trying "diskutil info disk6s2" and see whether 'Owners' is set to enabled in the output. I have to admit, I was not aware FAT32 could support ownership in the Unix sense, but I most definitely could be proved wrong.
Adrian -
Hi Bryn. Sorry it's been a long time since I've looked at this, so not exactly sure what may be happening. But as for the first error you're getting - do you have the drive in question mounted? I.e. Can you browse/see the drive in Finder? It might be that the drive needs to be mounted for the command to work. May be worth a try? (although I am even less familiar with this process with FAT32!)
Adrian -
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5 Comments
I entered the code then the password and it had a error disabling user/group ownership: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-69860) what do I do?
HI LaFinish. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that error, so I suggest searching for that error on Apple’s Community Forums or elsewhere on Google. From my quick searches, some have suggested that it is a message indicating that "The underlying task reported failure" is a very rare error, which indicates that your HDD has problems that the Disk Utility cannot fix. If this is true, this could indicate a potential hardware issue, or simply the need to re-format and OS re-install (backing up all files beforehand!).
Either way, it may be wise to ensure that you have all of your personal files backed up if you haven’t already.
But these are just from quick searches, so please do search the error on Google and see what others have experienced with the same message. Sorry I can’t be of any more help. Good luck!
Adrian -
Hello again, never mind, I worked it out! I just type in my password in the little greyed out key and press ENTER and done. I was expecting to see asterisks where I typed my password but obviously that doesn’t happen in the Terminal environment. Cheers
Ah great Maurice - glad to hear you managed to work through it! It’s a bit confusing initially, but yes, when it asks for a password after using the ‘sudo’ command, you won’t see any recognition of your keystrokes on the keyboard, but rest assured it is registering them! Hope all is well.
Adrian -
The device is a laptop with only one owner and user. And yet the plugin drive (which is of type FAT32) has acquired the tendency to enable ownership ..... Since its for backups this stops me from backing up the laptop 'hard drive'
Bryn Parrott - Open Reply