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runlsd

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 17, 2009
287
63
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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