External HD Problem

F

franks21

Guest
Hey,
I have a PC and an iBook. I originally used the PC so I have an external laptop hard drive. The HD came from a laptop from where I work and I bought an external casing for it. It is formatted for NTFS file system. When I hook it up into the iBook, I can see it and it will let me download but it will not let me upload or change any files on it. What can I do to get this to work?

thanks,
Nick
 
OP
R

roc

Guest
OS X doesn't support writing to NTFS file systems. You could use the disk with both your Windows computer and your OS X computer by re-formatting it with a filesystem which they can both read and write, i.e FAT32. While that would involve losing all of the data on the disk, as far as I know that's the only way to solve your little problem.
 
OP
B

buckie06

Guest
I have a similar problem,
I bought a 200gb internal that i made into an external. When i plug it in the mac reconigzes it but i can't but anything on the drive. I went to their tech site and it said something about partitions?? I would like to be able to use it on both pc and mac but it if there is no way than its not that big of a problem.

How would i re-format it for a filesystem, as stated in the previous post??

Thanks a lot!
 
OP
G

grammatonmac

Guest
Format the drive as fat32 if it will work, I forget the limit size of fat32, you may have to make 2 partitions but iirc fat32 does 2 terabytes in size, so one partiton should be ok. If you make the partition in winXP you may have trouble getting to to format as fat32 over 32 gigs, MS wants you to use NTFS over 32 gigs for what ever reason. I am pretty sure in the disk utils on OSX you can format as fat32. Hope this helps, I have ony been a mac user for 3 weeks myself.
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2004
Messages
10,345
Reaction score
597
Points
113
Location
Margaritaville
Your Mac's Specs
3.4 Ghz i7 MacBook Pro (2015), iPad Pro (2014), iPhone Xs Max. Apple TV 4K
From HERE

A FAT32 volume must have a minimum of 65,527 clusters. Windows XP Professional can format FAT32 volumes up to 32 GB, but it can mount larger FAT32 volumes created by other operating systems... and ..In theory, FAT32 volumes can be about 8 terabytes; however, the maximum FAT32 volume size that Windows XP Professional can format is 32 GB. Therefore, you must use NTFS to format volumes larger than 32 GB. However, Windows XP Professional can read and write to larger FAT32 volumes formatted by other operating systems.

It appears you will have to use something other than WinXP to format the drive as one FAT-32 unit, but once it is formatted WinXP will read it fine.
 
Joined
Feb 19, 2005
Messages
32
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Your Mac's Specs
PowerBook G4 17" 1.67 GHz 1.5 GB RAM 100GB 60GB 5G iPod
Is there a way to make a hard drive read and write (instead of read only) without losing data? If there isn't can I put the files on a bunch of DVD-R's and partition it, then put the files back on? Thanks
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2004
Messages
10,345
Reaction score
597
Points
113
Location
Margaritaville
Your Mac's Specs
3.4 Ghz i7 MacBook Pro (2015), iPad Pro (2014), iPhone Xs Max. Apple TV 4K
OSX can not write to NTFS. You will have to move the data off (to DVD-Rs is fine), reformat the drive to FAT-32 (but not with Windows) and then put the files back on.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top