How to create new folder on External Hard Drive

I'm a new Macbook Pro user. I have an attached Maxtor external drive connected to my Macbook Pro.

The Maxtor drive icon appears on the desktop on startup. I double click icon to see the drive's files and folders.

I go to the Finder's "File" drop-down menu to select "New Folder" to create a new folder to store pictures but the option is unavailable (greyed out).

I've searched help menus etc. to no avail. I know the drive is recognized because I can open folders and view pictures/documents and save to it.

How can I create a folder on my external hard drive? Your help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Am guessing the external drive is formatted as NTFS from a windows machine.

OS X can read but not write to NTFS without a 3rd party app.

You'll need either NTFS 3g or Paragon's NTFS for Mac OS X.

The first is free, the latter is not. I would recommend Paragon.

You other option is to reformat the external to HFS+. This would of course cause all data currently on the drive to be lost, so make sure you back it up first.

I opted to buy and format an external hard drive. I also reformatted the first hard drive. Thanks for your help bobtomay.