I bought a seagate External hard drive when I was still a PC guy. Now when I try to write to it from my mac it gives me an error and wont let me write to it. I can read from it and all, just cant write to it. I'd like to use it as a scratch disk for video editing. Any ideas on what to do? I think I need to reformat it but have no clue how to do this.......I should have kept that darn install disc it came with.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
External hard drive help
- Thread starter Joe Mack
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Use Disk Utility on the Mac. Make sure you temporarily move everything off the hard drive first, then format it as HFS Journaled and the mac will be able to read and write to it - but PCs won't be able to see it at all. FAT32 is the only format both operating systems can read and write. I know there's a program you can install on the Mac to let you write to NTFS, but I don't recall what it is at the moment. Maybe someone else will chime in with that answer in case you'd like to go that route.
Use Disk Utility and you can format it in:
FAT32
NTFS
MacOSX Extended Journaled
MacOSX Extended Journaled case sensitive
If you are going to use it only in the Mac environment, go with the last one.
________
A7
Last edited:
seagate 500gb-desktop-good choice of an external hd IMO.
i dropped it, well my dog jumped on the couch and the usb cord was lying on the spot where he was, and BOOM! it falls from the window pane. Unbeknownst to me, i didn't know that happened. Start her up, and she runs like new.
fyi for ya seagate people out there.
-b
i dropped it, well my dog jumped on the couch and the usb cord was lying on the spot where he was, and BOOM! it falls from the window pane. Unbeknownst to me, i didn't know that happened. Start her up, and she runs like new.
fyi for ya seagate people out there.
-b