Locked external Hard Drive

[Lien seloc]

Hello.

I want to delete a folder from my external hard drive (Maxtor Basics 1tb) but there is no option to delete when I 'right click', and when I drag it to trash I get the message: The item "Nov 2011" can't be moved to the trash because it can't be deleted.

When I select 'Get info' I can see that the folder is locked (under 'General') and under Sharing & Permissions, it says 'you can only read'

The locked symbol is greyed out and cannot be unticked. Is there a way for me to unlock this file, or indeed the whole of the hard drive?

 

[Mr Rabbit]

In the lower right corner of the "Get Info" window you should see a padlock, similar to the one in my attached picture.

Clicking that should prompt you to enter an administrator name/password. If you do this you should get the option to change the permissions and/or unlock the file. Once it's unlocked you should be able to drag it to the trash.

 

[Lien seloc]

Thanks, unfortunately there is no padlock for me to click on, no table either, just the words 'you can only read'.

 

[Mr Rabbit]

Have you saved data to this hard drive before or has it primarily been used with a PC?

If you do the same Get Info command on the external hard drive itself can you see if it's formatted as Mac OS, FAT32 or NTFS? My guess is that it's NTFS, which the Mac OS can read but cannot write to or alter. If this is the case I would use Disk Utility to reformat the hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but keep in mind this wipe all of the data on the hard drive.