Another External HD Problem

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Hey, as everyone seems to have External HD problems I thought I'd add mine to the melting pot. I have just got an external HD which I've converted from an internal one, originally it wouldn't show up on my Mac but now it will after a bit of help. However, when I try to copy anything to it it won't let me and comes up with the stop sign with the cursor. I went on Disk Utility but a similar problem arises in that it recognises it but won't let me do anything. I'm guessing it's been formatted wrong or something but don't know how to change that if Disk Utility won't let me do anything.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
.
Cheers :D
 

cwa107


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Hey, as everyone seems to have External HD problems I thought I'd add mine to the melting pot. I have just got an external HD which I've converted from an internal one, originally it wouldn't show up on my Mac but now it will after a bit of help. However, when I try to copy anything to it it won't let me and comes up with the stop sign with the cursor. I went on Disk Utility but a similar problem arises in that it recognises it but won't let me do anything. I'm guessing it's been formatted wrong or something but don't know how to change that if Disk Utility won't let me do anything.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
.
Cheers :D

Was the drive formatted with a Windows machine?
 

cwa107


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it was formatted witha Windows machine

Mac OS X has the ability to read NTFS (the default filesystem of most newer versions of Windows), but not write to it. You'll either need to reformat it using HFS (done via the Disk Utility) or with FAT32 (referred to as "MS-DOS" in Disk Utility). Use MS-DOS if you intend to share the drive with a Windows machine.
 
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Cheers, but it doesn't appear to let me reformat it, it has three options, first-aid, erase and restore but none seem to accept my HD
 

cwa107


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Cheers, but it doesn't appear to let me reformat it, it has three options, first-aid, erase and restore but none seem to accept my HD

Reformat and erase are synonymous. You'll need to select the partition from the left side of the Disk Utility window, click the Erase tab and then choose the Format and click "Erase".
 
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I tried that but the format bit is greyed out and won't let me select what tiype of format. Any tips?
 
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I've managed to fix it, cheers for you help cwa. I deleted the partition in Windows disk management and was then able to do the reformatting you mentioned above. Much appreciated.
 

cwa107


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I've managed to fix it, cheers for you help cwa. I deleted the partition in Windows disk management and was then able to do the reformatting you mentioned above. Much appreciated.

Glad to hear you managed to get it working.
 

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