External HDD Permissions

[tikibangout]

Hi, I have a Seagate 300GB External currently hooked up to my PC. The problem is, I want to back some things up from my iBook onto the external. When I plug the external into my iBook via firewire cable, I go to Get Info on the external, and the permissions say read only, thus I can't copy anything from my iBook to it. Copying from my PC to the external, however works. How do I change the permissions to accomplish my goal?

 

[mad jew]

How is the drive formatted? I'm guessing it's NTFS formatted in which case OSX cannot write to it. If you can somehow format it for FAT32 you'll be able to read and write with either machine.

 

[tikibangout]

I guess that means i'd have to erase all the data on the external. Ah well.

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, if I'm right then you'll have to reformat (erase) it.

But maybe check the formatting type first, just in case you do have a FAT32 drive and there's some other reason it's not working.

 

[tikibangout]

Its NTFS. Thanks for the help anyway. I guess I'll have to resort to burning to CDs or DVDs.

 

[mad jew]

It might be worthwhile converting it to FAT32 though so that you can share it with both machines.

 

[tikibangout]

I can at least transfer files from the External to my iBook. Its a 300GB external, and already 200GB is filled up. Maybe if I had another external to back that one up I would reformat. Maybe I'll buy one sometime down the road. Thanks for your help though man.