Unable to copy file into external hard drive: Read-only file system [closed]

Question

I am trying to save some important files from my faulty internal hard drive on my iMac. I am in the Internet Recovery mode and running the terminal. I also have connected an external 1TB storage and I can view the files inside it using the terminal. However, I cannot seem to write anything on the external drive as I get the message

cp: volumes/seagatedrive/backup.dmg: Read-only file system

I have used the chmod 777 command for my seagatedrive to no avail. The message I get there is:

Unable to change file mode on volumes/seagatedrive: Read-only file system

How can I make my external hard drive (seagatedrive above) writable?

Would appreciate any help.

Answer 1

UPDATE

OP has stated, that his drive is formatted as NTFS. therefore you'll need to setup thirdparty drivers to support write-access on that drive. An article about that can be found here: http://www.howtogeek.com/236055/how-to-write-to-ntfs-drives-on-a-mac/

[...] Mac OS X can read from NTFS drives, but it can’t write to them unless you use one of the below tricks. We highly recommend paying for a third-party NTFS driver if you need to do this as the other solutions don’t work as well and are more work to set up.[...]

Alternatively you should consider using exFAT as drive Format. Using exFAT has the advantage of compatibility on almost all Platforms.

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Since I can't put my thoughts in a comment (not enough rep. yet) here is what you can check.

osx behaves strangely with external drives which aren't formatted in Mac OS Format.

• check volume's partition-type
• check mount tab (if exists)
• make shure that your drive isn't write-protected.

if this all fails you could also check, if root has the proper rights to do these previous things. if so, there might be a problem with your account or privileges on that account.

if there won't be anyone being able to help you, you should try and ask your question on https://unix.stackexchange.com/

cheers and good luck