External Drive

[mikeyz6]

I have a Western Digital 1.5TB external portable hard-drive....

i can copy my files from the external to mac

but i can delete anything

and i cannot add and files to the hard-drive from the mac


thanks in advanced

 

[mikeyz6]

i also dont know is that DISK UTILITY thing will work for me... because.... i DO NOT want to delete the files off my external...

 

[mikeyz6]

also .. why does it take so long to burn a DVD on iDVD

 

[MacHamster68]

am i guessing right your external was once connected to a windows pc
as it would explain why you cant write and just read the files as its formated in ntfs i suppose

and snow leopard has disabled the feature of writing to ntfs simple because ntfs is a proprietary file format from microsoft

there are several ways to enable read and write functions

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

and here is a terminal hack to enable it
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/785376/

easier would be to safe the files somewhere and reformat the external in Mac OS Extended file format or if you happen to still having a windows pc then Fat 32 file format


and idvd is a app to create home made dvd's ,not just for burning, if you want just burn get toast
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/6351/toast-titanium
or freeware "burn"
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html
also the superdrives are not the fastest on the market , which does not really matter as the slower the better for burning if quality is important

and important get a external for time machine backups, the most important thing if you own a computer is a great backup