Can't read external drives

I receive the following error when trying to read from several external drives.

"ls: /Volumes/Samsung USB/: Operation not permitted"

I receive similar errors when trying to change to a directory on the external drive.

"Unable to change current folder to '/Volumes/Samsung USB'."

The drives are visible in Finder and on Terminal and I can read and write to the drives using other applications. I am running macOS Sonoma version 14.4.1.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

System Preferences --> Privacy & Security --> Full Disk Access

Click on the "+" at the bottom middle . Authenticate. Select /Applications and the appropriate version of MATLAB within that, and click the Open button.

That might get you a message about how "MATLAB_R2024a.app" will not have full disk access until it is quit. Click to quit and restart (provided that all of your work is currently saved at the MATLAB level.)

[Taylor Webb]

Strangely, I also found that if I dragged and dropped a mat file from finder to the command window it would succesfully load and allow regular command line access afterwards.

Following these steps seemed to make it so I was able to access the disk immediately after connecting it so I won't have to go through the additional step anymore. MATLAB was already listed as enabled in Full Disk Access but it must have been pointing at an older version or something. Re-importing it into Full Disk Access seems to have done the trick.