External Hard Drive Issue

[Sp71Supra]

Im sure this is a simple question, but I am having a problem going from windows to mac with an external hard drive.

I can read and write to the drive on any windows PC. On my macbook pro laptop, I can only read. It will not let me write or erase anything to the drive. Does this have to do with the drives formatting? If so which format will let me both read and write on mac and pc?

Thank You

 

[Captain Awesome]

Im sure this is a simple question, but I am having a problem going from windows to mac with an external hard drive.

I can read and write to the drive on any windows PC. On my macbook pro laptop, I can only read. It will not let me write or erase anything to the drive. Does this have to do with the drives formatting? If so which format will let me both read and write on mac and pc?

Thank You

Format to FAT32. I believe Disk Utility calls this "DOS" or something.

 

[r.j.s]

Your drive is formatted for NTFS, you can install NTFS-3g on you Mac in order to write to it.

http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

 

[iBookG4user]

Yes, the external hard drive is currently formatted to NTFS. You need to reformat it to FAT32 so both the Mac and the PC can read and write to it.

 

[durija]

Realize that on a FAT32 partition an individual file cannot be larger than 4GB. Usually not a problem unless you have something like a large video file.