External Hard Drives (questions, problems, discussions)

**eugene3ph** · 08-02-2006, 04:08 PM

i have a maxtor 250 onetouch II external hardrive that i've use before with window. last june ive purchase my first brand new macbook. i tried transfering file from my macbook to my maxtor and it wont allow me to do so. i keep on getting a message that my "maxtor' cannot be modified. plus i tried deleting files sending it my maxtor to trash (osx) and i get message that i don't have sufficient privileges. any tips?

thanks in advance.....
eugene

**Sponsor** · 08-02-2006 04:08 PM

**AthanWylde** · 08-02-2006, 04:11 PM

...most likely read-only lang yung maxtor mo. i think you're gonna have to reformat your drive so that both your windows machine and macbook can read it... format it as MS-DOS sa disk utility na lang...

daxdigital · 08-02-2006, 04:31 PM

Is your HDD formatted as NTFS? If it is, then that's the culprit. Macs allows reading of NTFS disks, but not write (or modifications). Check your HDD if it's formatted as such.

Check your permissions as well.

**eugene3ph** · 08-03-2006, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by daxdigital

Is your HDD formatted as NTFS? If it is, then that's the culprit. Macs allows reading of NTFS disks, but not write (or modifications). Check your HDD if it's formatted as such.

Check your permissions as well.

how do i check if my HD is NTFS in OSX. if im going to reformat it how do i do it in OSX? im also worried about my file from my Maxtor HD should i just transfer it to my macbook's HD?

thanks again

eugene

daxdigital · 08-03-2006, 11:16 AM

If you have a two-button mouse (like some of us) simply right click (or click-press control on keyboard for single-button users) on the drive and click Get Info. On the window you'll see the Format field specifying what type of disk volume you have.

If it is NTFS, it will specify as "Windows NT Filesystem."

You can copy files from an NTFS partition.

To format, go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utilities. You'll see your drive as a disk with the USB icon (or FireWire icon, if it's firewire). Check its Help section on how to partition your disk.

Warning: Erase and Partition destroys the files so BACK UP! Also, If you're using the drive with a Windows PC, Select MS-DOS Filesystem. Drawback is that you can't save a file bigger than 2GB. You can format it as a MacOS Partition, but the drive will be inaccessible to a Windows PC.

**marvinp** · 08-03-2006, 11:16 AM

Do a Get Info (Apple-I) on the hard disk. In the General drop down, it should say NTFS as the Format. After backing up your files, you can use Disk Utility in Applications > Utilities to reformat the drive.

**MacRon** · 08-03-2006, 11:30 AM

I've encountered that kind of problem too

**coolpix32** · 01-08-2009, 10:25 AM

Hi guys! I'm posting my problem on this thread as it is a similar problem.

I cannot write to my external HDD. The funny thing is that since I migrated from Window to Mac about seven months ago, I have been using the same external HDD. In other words, I am able to read and write on my Mac despite the formatted setting of NTFS.

This morning as I was about to back-up a file, it won't allow it. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Help please!

**Shinrai** · 01-08-2009, 11:57 AM

Just reinstall MacFuse to get back the functionality. You can google for it if you don't have it.

**NeilJohn** · 01-08-2009, 12:44 PM

To write to an NTFS formatted drive, you should have MACfuse and NTFS-3g. Both are free ware, you can just google to point you where to download. It will also allow you to format your drive in NTFS.

Cheers.