Why are my external disks showing "Owners: Disabled" on Mac running Sequoia?

Dannymac22 wrote:

No, as I said, when I open the padlock in Get Info for these external disks, I am STILL not allowed to change any permissions. The +/- selector is dimmed.

I don’t know how many times I’m gonna have to say this, but you cannot change the permissions on the top level of a startup drive or any part of a Time Machine back up.

“Ownership” does not mean what you apparently think it means.

but I just find it curious that I'm told for these external disks that "you can only read", which is completely false.

That statement is only in reference to that top level directory on the drive. It means absolutely nothing about everything below that top level.

For an active startup drive, the system volume part of the startup will have ownership disabled. The data volume will have owners enabled because that’s how you have individual permissions for different home folders.

for a active startup drive, the system volume part of the startup will have ownership disabled. The data volume will have owners enabled because that’s how you have individual permissions for different home folders.An external startup drive that is not active we’ll have ownership disabled for all volumes on the drive.

I think that you are making too much of this.

It is quite normal and often convenient to have "Ignore ownership on this volume" for external drives that you may carry and perhaps connect to multiple macs at times. Different user accounts on these macs could cause tremendous headaches just on accessing these files.

An example: I have a few external drives that are used with video files for editing and transferring between macs. It would be a nightmare without this feature.

You can in many cases change this setting: click the padlock, authenticate and then uncheck the box.

You still haven’t stated why you need permissions set on the drive. It is normally a headache. Unless you must set up permissions, Ignore ownership is way simpler.

Yes, you need to be an admin-capable user. You then add you user to Sharing & Permissions with read/write. Select your user and set as owner from the … popup menu. You may have to click the padlock and authenticate before you can add your user.

If you erase the drive, it should set you as the owner.

And finally, if they are Time Machine or Startup drives, you cannot modify the permissions at all.

I read in many places that "Ignore ownership on this volume" is not appropriate for bootable disks, which my backups are. drive. As noted, if I sign in as Administrator, I am STILL not allowed to change ownership of these disks.

As I stated earlier, you have absolutely no control over the permissions on a startup drive. An individual user cannot “own” a startup drive (or a Time Machine drive).

I don't know if it is the same information, but you can "Ignore ownership…" in the Sharing & Permissions section of Get Info.

Ignoring ownership really has nothing to do with ownership, but has everything to do with enabling or disabling permissions on the drive.

I already referred to "Ignore ownership on this volume." So why can't I just own my own disks? How do I own them?

You would have to set yourself as the owner in Get Info and maybe Apply To Enclosed from the action menu (…).

Do you need permissions on the drive? Is it shared amongst multiple users that each have their own separate areas.

This post is not a "HELP!" post. It's an "I don't understand" post.

What part of, “you cannot modify the top level directory of a startup drive” do you not understand?

What part of, you cannot modify a Time Machine backup at all do you not understand?

What part of, ownership has nothing to do with being some state of yours, but merely whether the file system permissions are enabled or disabled do you not understand?