renaming files on ext drives

[pranaman]

hi

I copied several video files from an android phone to a windows machine, then to an Western Digital 1 TB external drive.

It's now connected to my MBA, and I want to rename many of the files.

Seems it's not letting me. Anyone know how I can rename these video files on the external drive while connected to my MBA?

 

[Brian33]

Your external drive is probably formatted as NTFS (the typical file system for Windows). MacOS can read, but not change, files on NTFS drives.

There is a program called “NTFS for Mac” by Paragon Software that you can buy and install. It will let your Mac change files on an NTFS formatted drive.

 

[pranaman]

that's probably what it is. I'll connect it to a windows laptop for now, but that's great to know about for other times, thank you.

 

[David Hassholehoff]

While there are solutions, rw on NTFS is notoriously unreliable. You will have to run checkdisk from a Windows computer after using it with the Mac. I would consider mounting the volume over the network instead, that means practically zero reliability issues.