Can not delete files from External Hard Drive

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A few months ago my computer blew up on me, so I converted from windows to Mac. I had the old hard drive removed from my old computer and created an external hard drive out of it. Once my Mac had recognized it I tried to delete a few files which I no longer use, however some folders have a locked padlock in the lower left corner and I get a message: error code -61.

I am trying to keep all my photos, media files and documents but would like to get rid of program files etc which relate to my old computer. Can anyone help me????

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eric


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the drive is likely formatted NTFS.

your ideal move is to copy all of the items you want to save from this drive to either your mac, or another external. then reformat the old external as either HFS+ or FAT32 (if you'll be sharing the drive with a windows machine and have no files over 4 GB to store). Then move your data back to the old external.
 
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I am a bit of a computer mong... How do I reformat my external hard drive? I have copied all my old stuff to my Mac.

Kind regards,

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eric


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with the drive connected, go to applications folder > utilities > disk utility

you will see your mac's HD and the external on the left hand side. Select the left most selection for the external (this will be the drive itself, not a partition.
select the partition option, choose your number of partitions, size of partitions and file system.
Keep in mind that if you frequently use this drive with a mac and a windows pc, FAT32 may be your best option for file system unless you plan on storing HUGE files.
There are ways around this, but that requires installing apps on the pc or the mac depending on which other file system you go with (HFS+ or NTFS, the second won't be an option on your mac).
 
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Hey just wanted to thank you Eric for the great post. I just found it using the search function and it worked like a charm.
 
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Hitting the "command" and "I" keys will bring up the information about the folder and simply uncheck the "Lock" box and you're good to go.
 
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i am a new user of mac book pro. a few days back i was a able to delete contents from my external hard disk & copy content in external HD with out any problem but now i am unable to delete contents form the same external hard disk as well as copy file in external hard disk. after checking i found my external hard disk is of ntfs format. Is there any other way to delete contents form the external hard disk & copy content in external HD.
 

Slydude

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Mac OS X can read NTFS drives but not write to one without third party software. You're options are either use something like PARAGON Software Group - NTFS for Mac, communication channel between Mac OS X and Windows. The other option is to use Disk Utility to format the drive to HFS+ extended journaled. If you go this route be sure to copy any important data from the drive first. Reformatting removes anything that is already on the drive.
 

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