External hard drive problem

[iGirl]

Hi

I have an NTFS external hard drive, which I bought to use with my PC.

I have connected it up to my intel iMac, and it recognised it straight away. However, it will only let me 'read' files, not 'write' files. So basically I can't save any work done on my mac to it, which makes it pretty useless.

Normally you can change permissions to a folder/file by going apple + i, but when I try this it just has a message saying 'you can only read files'.

I wondered if anyone had any advise on how I can sort this problem out?

Thanks

 

[bluekatt]

hmm write only yes ?
hve you tried formatting it yet to ms dos compatability ? ( fat )
that usually seems to sort the little buggers out

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

as bluekatt says...

and as we said in post 8 of this thread...https://www.mac-help.com/forums/showthread.php?t=484 ;-)

Just open up Disk Utility select the drive and go to erase and select the MS-DOS file system as below...

This will erase the drive and change the filesystem to FAT32, which you can then read/write on both systems.

regards

Ric

 

[iGirl]

OK, thanks, will give that a try later on today

 

[Cory Cooper]

Go

From what I remember, OS X may be able to read NTFS disks, but it cannot write to them. The only Windows formatting it plays nice with is FAT32.

C

 

[skywalters]

Hi

I have read this but when i try to do to an erase all options are greyed out. Can anyone advise. Thanks

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

is this on the 'internal' disk drive ?

regards

Ric