Some help please with my new iMac and my external hard drive.

ozziegn

The man behind the curtain...
Joined
Jan 13, 2001
Messages
17,533
okay, here's my situation. I just bought a 24" iMac which I am loving so far. the only problem is that I cannot write to my external hard drive which I've had now for about two years. I used the hard drive with my PC without any problems. but for some reason, I can't write to it when it's plugged in to my iMac. it gives me some kind of an error telling me I don't have permission to write to it. I can read the files just fine, but not write.

could someone please tell me what would I need to do to overcome this minor problem?
 
Is the Drive formatted NTFS?

If it is, the mac can not normally write to NTFS drives. (FAT32 is fine, though, if you need to share it with a Windows system)

You could also look into MacFUSE and NTFS3g, which will let you read/write ntfs drives.
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
 
Is the Drive formatted NTFS?

If it is, the mac can not normally write to NTFS drives. (FAT32 is fine, though, if you need to share it with a Windows system)

You could also look into MacFUSE and NTFS3g, which will let you read/write ntfs drives.
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
I'd bet all my money that drive is formatted with NTFS. If you're not using a PC anymore, I would suggest copying everything and formatting the drive to HFS+ (Disk Utility is used for formatting, which is in the Utilities folder FYI).
 
NTFS for sure that external is formatted in. Common "minor problem" everyone goes through when they switch over from pcs to macs.
 
I'd bet all my money that drive is formatted with NTFS. If you're not using a PC anymore, I would suggest copying everything and formatting the drive to HFS+ (Disk Utility is used for formatting, which is in the Utilities folder FYI).

but that's the thing. I have my 24" iMac that goes both ways (Windows and Mac) which means I still need to be able to access these files on my external hard drive.

oh well, it matters not now because I just copied everything over to my Mac hard drive and then I reformatted the external drive using FAT32. now all my files are back on my external drive and can be read or can be written by Windows or Mac.

so I guess you can say I am bi. (meaning I can go both ways. :D )
 
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