Help with a Mac

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Dylanlewis2000

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I have had a mac mini for some time now but i have only just got used to playing with it. I have taken some photos today that i want to move over to an external hard drive. When i plug the hard drive in to the mac, it says that i cannot move anything over to it because i dont have the correct file permissions

I have loaded up disk utility within the applications folder of the mac, but this does not allow me to change any of the permissions.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? The drive is connected via USB.

Thanks
 
is the external drive formatted for windows, if so thats your problem

stew
 
The format of the drive is not compatible with mac.

You need to open Disk Utility and format the drive. Change it to MS DOS as this will enable use on both the mac and on a windows PC should you need to do so. If not then just go for Mac OS X Extended.

Hope this helps
 
It will read the drive but i cant put anything on it. Kind of a design flaw there, are you saying they cant write to NTFS or FAT32?
 
Its a totally different operating system than windows so if it is windows formatted then no it will not write to it.
 
I have around 300gb of photos which i can move off and store else where, but some of the photos are 30gb in size, would a dos based file format support this... i dont think it will
 
Do you need to copy files between a mac and a pc?
If yes then format for dos using disk util. As long as the drive is big enough it shouldn't be a problem.
If it's only mac you use then format it as mac os once again using disk util.

This should solve your problem.
 
yeah i love panano's. I really would love to move over to a mac and buying a MBP but theres little things like this that keep happening which makes me think, maybe i should stay with the devil i know
 
one more question, why is it when i go to CUT in a mac it only gives me the option to COPY?
 
If you mean to cut and paste a file then Mac's dont really work in that way. You move the file from one location to the other and if you dont want the file to stay in the old location then you move it to the trash.
They dont operate in the same way as a PC
 
If you haven't already formatted the drive you don't actually need to, there is a way to get the best of both worlds. I think i'm right in saying Fat32 is the old windows system and NTFS is the newer one, FAT32 will only let you copy a file thats max 4gb but ntfs max is pretty much unlimited. I use something called MACFUSE and NTFS-3G on my macbook pro, works a treat and its pretty easy to install and free. You could google it or watch this tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhZ4RuZNgq4&feature=related
 
PC's are like Air Conditioners, they work fine until you open windows..


seriously if the ext drive is formatted MAC then windows wont even see it.
 
ahh thanks all, im still wandering around this world of mac. I have had the mini for a few years now just havent got round to playing with it, and its just so different. Thanks for the help, ill try macfuse though :-)
 
it just seems like a lot of arse ache to be honest. Dont companies believe in interoprability anymore?
 
Dylanlewis2000 said:
it just seems like a lot of arse ache to be honest. Dont companies believe in interoprability anymore?
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I'm not sure why you say this to be honest Dylan...? As the poster above this post says, ask Canon and Nikon that question.

Apple and MS are two different companies in their own right, and they have developed their products as they see fit.

The thing is though, there is, as you put it, interoperability between the two systems. I can create an MS Document on my Mac and send this to my work PC... or vice versa. I can do this with all of my image files and my RAW data files, my music MP3's & iTunes, and my Cubase stuff... all the files will open on each platform.

I am not sure what the issue is here. If you want to use the external drive only on your Mac, then simply format it for Mac OSx Extended - when you'll get optimum performance from it using the Mac OS, and place all your image files on that. If you have trouble seeing your Mac from your PC or vice-versa, and you can't figure out what's not happening, then simply copy your files to some online storage or email them to yourself from your PC and pick them up on your Mac. There's only one PC in our house - and that's my lads that he uses for games, I can see that from my Mac no probs.
 
Erm, there have been a few vague posts so i'll just clarify some things for you.

NTFS = Windows - Mac's can read NTFS, but not write to it
FAT32 = Windows or Mac - After NTFS this is probably the most common format used. However its largest draw back is as mentioned the inability to handle files over 4Gb, you'll have to look in to greedier's work around for this problem.

I'm not that familiar with the mac formats so you'll have to look into them and see if windows can use them.
 
Not read through this post in full but the problem you are having is that MAC OSX cannot write to an NTFS drive, it can read it but not write.

You option is to either

Use disk utility to format it as MAC Journaled format (which you will then not be able to see in Windows)

Use disk utility to format as FAT32 which you will be able to see in Windows but it is bloated and you will loose a lot of file space and not be able to handle file over 4GB as stated above by Blue Eagle.

The best option is to get a program called Paragon NTFS, this is a plug in that will allow you to write to NTFS on a mac... (there are "extended eval" copies out there..!!!!)

Hope that helps

Mac
 
You can keep the drive connected to the PC, and connect to it from your Mac via a network, and it'll read/write fine :)
 
thanks to everyone. I have used that NTFS-3G and have mac FUSE installed on my little mac now. Problem is i dont want to format it to mac only as i want to be able to use it on both my PC and my Mac. Thanks for the help everyone.
 
If you have the NTFS writing software, surely you can keep it as it is?
 
yeah but its strange, if i copy large amounts of data over like 8gb it seems to get half way through and then stall, but if i do smaller 2gb batches, its fairly quick.
 
Dylanlewis2000 said:
yeah but its strange, if i copy large amounts of data over like 8gb it seems to get half way through and then stall, but if i do smaller 2gb batches, its fairly quick.
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I think there is something about only being able to copy files of up to 4GB depending on file system type, that might be why it stalls on larger copies.
 
I had to call apple yesterday about an unrelated issue and I asked the tech guy about this and he confirmed that NTFS, FAT and DOS file types are restricted to 4GB but MAC OS Journaled can accept any file size.
 
chrism_scotland said:
Is there anyway to partition an external hard-drive so that part can be formatted for my Mac but I can use a portion for my PC backups?
Click to expand...

Best way to do it is if you format it to FAT32.
 
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