I just got a new Seagate 300gb hard drive, mounted in an external case. I formatted the drive (using XP, SP2) and added some flac files. I discovered all my folders and files I've added are read only. I right clicked on the folders one at a time and deselected the read only property. However, they revert back to read only.

I don't understand what is going on. Any suggestions how I can configure the drive to accept any file/directory without the read only designation?

Thanks much.

You may need to "take ownership" of the drive.

See:
http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/dsss/docs/acls2.shtml
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;308421

Hmm. It seems like the drive is writing that attribute by itself, but it would be strange if there is a switch “read/write” on a side…

So, it means once you have added some files, you are not able to delete them from the drive at all?

Hmm, it seems like the problem is gone. Although the Read Only box still is filled when viewing individual folders, the files inside do not have the Read Only box checked or filled.

I am able to change the tags on the files too without any problems. Strange the folders still indicate they are Read Only. What is really weird is that these folders do not have a check in the Read Only box. They are filled with a green colored square.

oh so the folder says read only but the file doesnt? yea my folder always has read only for some reason. but i can rename the folder and delete it. so its no biggie

strange. i've had a simliar problem using my drive on a Mac, where the drive is "locked" or some crap like that, so i can see it but do nothing with it... works on every PC i've tried it on though (at least every PC with USB/1394 ports on it).

It is quite normal for folders on an NTFS drive to show a square mark in the Read-only box. The square mark is different than just a checkmark alone (signifying read-only).

The square mark is related more to permissions. The general meaning of its presence is that some users do not have full rights (permissions) to the folder/contents.