When using the Samsung X5, you may encounter an issue where you can no longer write data on the solid state drive. Instead, you can only read data off of the external storage drive.
If you are encountering this type of issue, then you can follow this troubleshooting guide.
Before we being, we should note that this guide will be covering the 500 GB Samsung X5 Portable Solid State Drive (Model Number: MU-PB500B), 1 TB Samsung X5 Portable Solid State Drive (Model Number: MU-PB1T0B) and 2 TB Samsung X5 Portable Solid State Drive (Model Number: MU-PB2T0B).
How to fix Samsung X5’s disabled write access error on Mac and PC
If you use the exFAT format with the Samsung X5, you could run into write access issues if you are switching between connecting the SSD to a Mac and a Windows PC.
To fix this issue, you can take the following steps:
1. Connect your Samsung X5 Portable Solid State Drive to your Mac.
2. Make sure that the LED on your X5 is displaying a solid white color. If the LED is blinking, then it means that the SSD is busy currently reading or writing data.
3. Once the LED on the X5 is solid white, you need to eject the external drive from your Mac. You can do so with the following methods:
Locate the X5 icon from the desktop and then drag it over to the Trash.
Click on the X5 icon from the desktop. Select File and then Disconnect.
Click on the Finder sidebar, select your X5 storage drive and then Eject.
4. With your X5 SSD disconnected from your Mac, you can safely unplug the drive.
5. Plug your X5 into your Windows PC computer.
6. You may get a dialogue box stating that write access has been disabled. Click on the “Scan and fix” option, which will let your Windows PC perform the Check Disk (CHKDSK) fix.
7. If you don’t see a pop-up dialogue box, you can manually enable Check Disk by first locating your X5 either on the desktop or though File Explorer.
Next, you need to right click on the icon of your X5. Select Properties, then Tools and, finally, Check.
8. Once the Check Disk process has been completed, re-test your X% on your Windows PC and Mac to see if the write access issues have been fixed.
Using the right file format
If the aforementioned solution that not fix the write access errors, the next step we recommend taking is to make sure you are using the correct format.
By default, the Samsung X5 uses exFAT, which is compatible with both the Windows and Mac operating systems. With exFat, you should be able to read and write data on the two OS platforms.
If your external drive uses NTFS, then you can read and write with Windows. For Mac, however, you can only read off of the SSD.
If the X5 is using HFS, then you can read and write with Mac. However, the Windows operating system won’t be able to recognize the external SSD at all.
If your Samsung X5 is not compatible with your operating systems when it comes to writing data, then you might want to consider reformatting your external solid state drive to a compatible format.
However, it is important to note that reformatting will erase all the data you have stored on the drive. So, you should backup any important files you have on the SSD before changing the format.
Contacting Samsung
If none of the fixes worked, then you might want to consider contacting Samsung for additional support.
If your X5 is still covered under warranty, then you might be able to get a replacement if the write access error ended up being a hardware issue.