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jammanex

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 12, 2011
4
0
Hi, I just recently purchased my first ever iMac and am have some software I downloaded while awaiting the delivery of my machine. I transfered the software to an external USB drive (NTFS) and downloaded NTFS-3G but am getting the below message. Can someone let me know what this is and perhaps what I need to do to rectify this? Thanks!
 

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Hi, I just recently purchased my first ever iMac and am have some software I downloaded while awaiting the delivery of my machine. I transfered the software to an external USB drive (NTFS) and downloaded NTFS-3G but am getting the below message. Can someone let me know what this is and perhaps what I need to do to rectify this? Thanks!

NTFS-3G doesn't work well with 64-bit, which lion is natively; try installing the commercial tuxera ntfs drivers which run in 64-bit :)
 
Ok this is a common issue. Macs cannot write to NTFS formatted drives although they can read them. So you can use Disk Utility on your Mac and format your external hard drive either Mac OS extended journaled which will usually work with your mac without a problem. Or you can format it Ex FAT which works with both Windows and Mac OS's if you want to use it on Windows Pc's and Macs. Do not format it as FAT as that doesn't support long file names.

Warning! you are erasing your external hard drive so everything on it will be lost and you will have to move everything back over to it after you erase and properly format the external hard drive. So back it up to your PC if you haven't done so already before you proceed.

Youll find "Disk Utility" in "Applications" in the "Utilities" folder of you Macintosh hard drive.

Launch disk utility then click on the hard drive you want to reformat. In the Left pane choose the drive you want to erase.(I chose "extra" for this example) In the right pane select erase from the upper tab options 2nd to the right. Then choose either "Mac OS " Extended (Journaled)" or "ExFAT" from the format drop down menu. Once you're satisfied that's what you want to do select erase to erase and reformat your external hard drive.

Refer to the picture I sent if for using disk utility.
 

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