I have an external hard drive that I used on my windows laptop. Now that I have a mac it acts different. One difference is I can not drag and drop a folder with movies in it on the the ext hd from my mac. I get the circle with a slash through it. Is this because it is formatted to work with windows? How do I correct this? I tried using win 8 on parallels and it says I need permissions but I don't see that option to okay it. Can I get some help please? Thx.
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can't move files to external hard drive
- Thread starter Outkast27
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Yes. Your Mac can natively read, but not write to NTFS-formatted drives.
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
- Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
- Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
[*]To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X, here are some alternatives:- For Mac OS X 10.4 or later (32 or 64-bit), install Paragon ($19.95) (Best Choice for Lion and Mountain Lion)
- For Mac OS X 10.5 and later, including Lion, FUSE for OS X
- For 32-bit Mac OS X, install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free) (does not work in 64-bit mode)
- Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx $36), which is an enhanced version of NTFS-3G with faster performance.
- Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and later versions, but is not advisable, due to instability.
- AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
- Maximum file size: 16 TB
- Maximum volume size: 256TB
- You can use this format if you routinely share a drive with multiple Windows systems.
Read the bold text in my response. You don't need to reformat the drive to retrieve the files.
If you want to format or reformat a drive, this will help:
Format A Hard Drive Using Disk Utility (which is in your /Applications/Utilities folder)
Choose the appropriate format:
HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Don't use case-sensitive)
- Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
- Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! backups of Mac OS X system files.
[*]To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install MacDrive
[*]To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer - Maximum file size: 8EiB
- Maximum volume size: 8EiB
- Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits
- You can use this format if you only use the drive with Mac OS X, or use it for backups of your Mac OS X internal drive, or if you only share it with one Windows PC (with MacDrive installed on the PC)
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
- Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
- Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
[*]To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X, here are some alternatives:- For Mac OS X 10.4 or later (32 or 64-bit), install Paragon ($19.95) (Best Choice for Lion and Mountain Lion)
- For Mac OS X 10.5 and later, including Lion, FUSE for OS X
- For 32-bit Mac OS X, install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free) (does not work in 64-bit mode)
- Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx $36), which is an enhanced version of NTFS-3G with faster performance.
- Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and later versions, but is not advisable, due to instability.
- AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
- Maximum file size: 16 TB
- Maximum volume size: 256TB
- You can use this format if you routinely share a drive with multiple Windows systems.
exFAT (FAT64)
- Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
- Not all Windows versions support exFAT. See disadvantages.
- exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
- AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT
- Maximum file size: 16 EiB
- Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB
- You can use this format if it is supported by all computers with which you intend to share the drive. See "disadvantages" for details.
FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
- Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
[*]Maximum file size: 4GB. - Maximum volume size: 2TB
- You can use this format if you share the drive between Mac OS X and Windows computers and have no files larger than 4GB.
Yes, copy the files/folders of the HDD onto another properly formatted HDD or your Mac's internal HDD, then use Disk Utility to format it appropriately and copy the data back.