There’s an issue with Western Digital MyBook Live devices when connected to a Mac. Some files may be unreadable as a result of a permission bug that sets the owner name to “daapd” which is part of the forked-daapd media sharing protocols used by iTunes. More info can be found on the Wiki page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Access_Protocol
Is there nothing iTunes won’t ruin on a system? Moving files around, changing permissions, such a badly written media management program.
Anyway I had a whole bunch of movie files greyed out as a result of the permission set changing to “daapd” which meant I couldn’t use them across my LAN.
Solutions by WD (Western Digital) suggest backing up the backup drive and then wiping it and restoring the files but there’s a simple fix.
The permission’s for files are set via hidden system files in the Apple file structure so if those files are removed then the permissions will reset so you can view them.
I was using my Gaming PC to try and see if I could access the files on my MyBookLive and found that I could access them without issue. I also noticed the two Apple file structure files of .AppleDouble and .DS.Store By deleting those two files all the media files I wanted to access were available to use on my Mac!
This was a result of trying to copy 2 terabytes of files off my MyBookLive with the intention of restoring them to the drive to reset the permissions.
To delete the .AppleDouble and .DS.Store from a Mac on a MyBookLive you can use terminal and SSH connect.