External hard drive is detected as Read-only on Mac OS X

After connecting a Kanguru hard drive to a Mac computer, the device is being recognized as read-only and files cannot be copied to it. 

If Mac OS X is recognizing your Kanguru hard drive as read-only then the drive is likely formatted with a Windows file system not supported by Macs. You can check which file system your drive is currently formatted in by clicking the drive icon on your desktop and then pressing "Command + I". This opens the drive info window where you can check the Format under the General section.  If the Format is listed as "NTFS" then the Sharing and Permissions status at the bottom of the drive info window will show as "Read only". 

In order to write data to your drive, you will need to format the drive using a Mac compatible file system. 

Warning! Formatting will erase any data currently stored on your Kanguru drive. Please back up any important data before formatting your drive.

To format your drive:

1.  Click on the Go menu and then select Utilities. 

2. In the Utilities window, open the Disk Utility application.

3. Locate and select the Kanguru drive in the menu on the left side of the Disk Utility window. 

4. Click on the Erase tab. 

5. Select a Volume Format from the list of available formats. Most commonly used Mac formats are FAT32, Mac OS Standard or Mac OS Extended.

6. Click on the Erase button located at the bottom right of the window. 

Once the erase operation completes, go back to the drive info window and verify that the format has changed. The status of Sharing & Permissions now show as "You can read and write".