can't copy stuff to USB external hard drive(FAT32)

[watermelonbook]

I have a MBA 11.(late 2013)

The USB external hard drive is made by Seagate and it has a 1TB capacity.
The drive is in FAT32 format. It is a large 3.5 drive and requires AC power
to run. It functions just fine when connected to a Windows PC,
Playstation3, or even a Chromebook notebook. I can copy, paste, move,
create new folders, or delete files.

When the drive is connected to my MBA, I can only view the files.(play
a video or audio file, for example) However, I cannot make modifications
to the drive.(i.e. copying files from MBA to USB drive)

I've been searching online for a solution but none has worked so far.
Is there something that I'm doing wrong?

The strange thing is that my MBA has no problem modifying files on my
other portable drive(a small palm-sized USB 3.0 drive that has 1TB,
also in FAT32, powered by the MBA's USB 3.0 port)

 

[Porco]

Have you tried doing 'Get Info' on the drive and expanding the 'Sharing & Permissions' section at the bottom of the Info window? Your username should have the privileges to both 'Read & Write'. If not, you can change it to that by clicking the padlock and entering your password to allow you to change it.

EDIT: My bad, superwoman below is right, ignore this post, sorry.

 

[superwoman]

Your observations are consistent with an NTFS-formatted drive. OSX's native NTFS driver only allows read, not write. Do you mind using Disk Utility to double-check the drive format?

If it is indeed FAT32, then permissions has got nothing to do with it. FAT32 has no access control.

 

[watermelonbook]

Your observations are consistent with an NTFS-formatted drive. OSX's native NTFS driver only allows read, not write. Do you mind using Disk Utility to double-check the drive format?

If it is indeed FAT32, then permissions has got nothing to do with it. FAT32 has no access control.

I'm not home right now, but I can say with 1000% certainty that the drive
is FAT32. It spend most of the time connected via USB to my Sony
Playstation 3 for playing video/audio files(MP3, AVI, MP4, etc). The PS3
is incapable of reading NTFS format.

 

[ET iPhone Home]

I have a MBA 11.(late 2013)

The USB external hard drive is made by Seagate and it has a 1TB capacity.
The drive is in FAT32 format. It is a large 3.5 drive and requires AC power
to run. It functions just fine when connected to a Windows PC,
Playstation3, or even a Chromebook notebook. I can copy, paste, move,
create new folders, or delete files.

When the drive is connected to my MBA, I can only view the files.(play
a video or audio file, for example) However, I cannot make modifications
to the drive.(i.e. copying files from MBA to USB drive)

I've been searching online for a solution but none has worked so far.
Is there something that I'm doing wrong?

The strange thing is that my MBA has no problem modifying files on my
other portable drive(a small palm-sized USB 3.0 drive that has 1TB,
also in FAT32, powered by the MBA's USB 3.0 port)

You have to format the drive for both pc and apple use in Disk Utility. Backup all the files first and reformat:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Formatting_an_External_Device

The same happened to me. For some reason, I had to reformat to FAT32 on my MBA, not PC. Once it was reformatted, I used the drive on my MBA first before using it on my pc and it worked.