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Help! 1TB Maxtor External Hard Drive, 'Read Only'

allymmpink

allymmpink

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 30, 2008
20
0
Hey everyone.
I have recently got my dad's 1TB Maxtor external hard drive, because it crashed his windows. (I always told him to get a mac anyway).
So - it's plugged in.
Registering with the computer as an ejectable device.
But it is 'Read Only'
How can I make it so I can actually use it and put files on it?
ANY help would be greatly appreciated.
THANKS!
Ally.
:apple:
 
allymmpink said:
Hey everyone.
I have recently got my dad's 1TB Maxtor external hard drive, because it crashed his windows. (I always told him to get a mac anyway).
So - it's plugged in.
Registering with the computer as an ejectable device.
But it is 'Read Only'
How can I make it so I can actually use it and put files on it?
ANY help would be greatly appreciated.
THANKS!
Ally.
:apple:
Click to expand...

It's probably NTFS file format, you'd have to reformat it for FAT32
 
It's probably formatted NTFS, which means you cannot write to it without special drivers.

Best to reformat it. FAT32 or HFS will do.
 
sorry - this may be a really stupid question...
but how do i reformat it?
i am new with externals.
 
It crashed windows?

Did he install the maxtor software?

I have a 300GB maxtor, and when I uninstalled it's program from OS X, it would dismount itself after a while, at random. This would crash OS X, making it reboot on me.


I thought it was broken, but I re-installed the sync software that I never use, and It's worked fine ever since. I don't like it's one touch button because it messed up my iTunes pretty bad.
 
You have to erase the drive and format it to HFS+ (for mac only) or FAT (if you want to use it with both). Open Disk Utility and format it (you will lose all your data on that drive!).
I guess your drive is currently formatted with NTFS, which is read-only on OS-X. Another solution is to get a third party utility like MacFuse that will make OS.X read and write to NTFS (no need to format, so you will not lose your current data on the drive).

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
 
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