External Hard Drive from Windows to Mac

Marc

Marc

TPer Emeritus
Messages
34,835
Edit My Images
Yes
When I was in the Apple store, the salesman told me that I would have no problems unplugging my external hard drive from my windows laptop and plugging t into my new mac, but I am unable to create any new folders on it as it says the existing folders are read only. Is there a way to unlock these folders and make them read/write again or do I need to have a serious conversation with the salesman?
 
if the drive was formatted in FAT you can read and write with both pc and mac, if its formatted in NTFS you can read and write in pc but only read in mac.

you could always backup the data on the drive and then reformat in FAT and then copy the data back to the disc, this would enable it to be read and written to in pc and mac.

or

There is a 3rd party piece of software available to enable the mac to write to NTFS formatted discs called Paragon NTFS for mac osx http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ i have been using it for a long time without any problems.
 
I don't think he tried to pull a fast one. My external drive started life attached to my PC and as he said, I had no problems.
I think most drives are formatted in FAT.
 
There are quite a few threads on here with links to software to sort this issue.
 
Maybe OS 11 will be able to when it is released ;)

OS X can READ NTFS, but needs extra software to write to it.
 
As Jason mentions, NTFS-3G is free and works well allowing you to write to NTFS formated drives, no need to buy the commercial software sold via the Apple store.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top