Moving Data directly from one external HD to another?

I hesitate writing this but I am a "new mac user"; every time I google a question and find one of these threads this is how they all start.
Regardless I just got a 2010 Macbook Pro running 10.6.6 Snow Leopard. I plugged two of my external hd's into my Macbook Pro and tried moving all the data from one external hd to the other. I tried "copy" and "paste" but after I copied the data and went to the other external hd it did not give me the option to "paste." (It did however give me the option to paste on the Mac HD). I then tried to just drag the data from one external to the the other and it gave me the "no" symbol. (When I say drag I mean I opened up both of the external hd windows and just tried dragging and dropping from one window to the other).
It would allow me to move the data from one external hd to the Mac HD, then to the other external but thats retarded. I assume I am missing something very very basic. As far as this being a case of a hardware issue, or simply to much data to fit on the other external hd, I plugged them both into my desktop PC and they are transferring directly from one to the other as I write this. I did attempt to google this and look through the forum. I apologize if this issue has already been answered.
Thanks
Aaron

How about telling us what format both of the drives are using? FAT-32? NTFS? HFS+?

chscag said:

How about telling us what format both of the drives are using? FAT-32? NTFS? HFS+?

Click to expand...

All my drives are formatted to NTFS so I can move large HD files.

OS X natively reads but doesn't write to NTFS. But I think your choice of NTFS is a good one for your purpose!
Install NTFS-3G software to allow OS X write to the drive(s).
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/NTFS-3G.shtml
(notice you also need MacFUSE)

There is also a commercial version of NTFS-3G by Tuxera.

Well that would make sense why it wouldn't write! lol Thanks for the link.