Error when deleting files from external HD

[runlsd]

Hi there,

I bought my first mac (Aluminum Macbook 2.0GHz) a few days ago. So far so good. The learning curve wasn't as steep as imagined.

There's an error I haven't been able to resolve. I transferred all my files to my external hard drive. A 500GB Western Digital HD. When I try to delete files from the external HD I first get this message:

"The item "whateveri'mtryingto.delete" will be deleted immediately
Are you sure you want to continue?"

I click continue and I get this:
"Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occurred.
(Error code -61)"

Your help will be much appreciated.

 

[JediMeister]

What format is the external hard drive? Typically it will be FAT32 or NTFS. If its NTFS, the Mac can read from it, it cannot write/unwrite(delete) files from it. You could reformat the drive, which would remove ALL data from it, or delete files on the drive from a Windows computer.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

There is a free kernel extension called NTFS-3G which allows OS X to write to NTFS formatted drives.

 

[runlsd]

Thanks for pointing out the formatting. I was able to convert it to FAT32. Now I need to move all my files, which are spread out across three computers, back on the external hard drive. Takes a while but now my external hard drive goes both ways. Thanks again,

John