Apple MacBook offers a high level of performance ranging from watching high-res videos to handing heavy tasks. However, that doesn’t mean that everything runs smoothly. Things sometimes go wrong; your Mac’s hard drive fails and you lose your irreplaceable photos. Apple is fully aware of that, so the Cupertino company built a back-up feature into its macOS, called Time Machine.
Time Machine allows you to back up all of your files on your Mac to a separate storage device or a macOS Server, so you can easily restore your device if something goes wrong. However, Time Machine is not something that runs smoothly all the time. A lot of Mac owners have reported that Time Machine fails to access the backup disk. They get a message saying that “the backup volume is read only”.
There could be any reason for why Time Machine cannot access the backup disk, but the main cause is that someone has changed the backup disk to “read only”. If you are among those users who have been dealing with the issue, we have a couple of solutions that help fix Time Machine backup volume is read only problem.
Before trying to anything, make sure you have already turned off Time Machine on your Mac. To do this, you simply need to launch System Preferences > Time Machine and toggle off the switch.
How to fix Time Machine backup volume is read only problem
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Eject an exterior hard drive from your Mac and re-connect
If you now use an exterior hard drive to create a backup with Time Machine, try effecting it from your Mac and then reconnect to see if the problem is fixed. The process is pretty simple. If you need help, then check out the steps below.
Step one: First off, perform a right-click on the hard drive and select Eject from the drop-down menu (If you don’t see your Time Machine drive on your desktop, head to Disk Utility and locate it)
Step two: Next up, plug the hard drive out of your Mac, wait for a few seconds and plug it back to your Mac
Step three: Head to System Preferences and turn Time Machine back on. If the problem still persists, make sure that you read on.
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Repair a Time Machine Drive
If the above-mentioned solution fails to work for you, there is a good chance that you are now having errors with your Time Machine Drive. Therefore, you need to repair it to get things working again.
macOS includes a built-in disk repair utility, known as Disk First Aid, which analyzes and repairs basis hard drive problems. In this case, it may do the trick. Once your Time Machine drive is repaired, turn Time Machine back on, and it should work fine. If Time Machine still cannot access the backup disk, let’s proceed to the next step.
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Repair a Time Capsule
If you are now using a Time Capsule to create a backup with Time Machine, you can repair your Time Capsule drive to fix the issue. The process may be a little bit confusing to many folks. If you need help, check out the steps below (make sure that your Time Capsule drive is mounted on your desktop).
Step one: First off, you need to open a Finder window and find your Time Capsule. Once you see it, double click on it and move to the next step
Step two: Open the Backups folder, locate the .sparsebundle file and drag it to the Disk Utility sidebar
Step three: Select the file and hit the First Aid tab. After that, click the Repair Disk button and wait until the repair process is finished
Step four: Head to System Preferences and turn Time Machine back on to see if the problem is fixed.
Also read: How to block websites on your iPhone
These are the 3 troubleshooting steps that help you fix Time Machine backup volume is read only problem. Hopefully, they work best for you. If not, don’t forget to let us know in the comment below.s
