Can't copy files to backup ext drive

I want to backup my photos to an external drive but my MacBook Pro v10.8.5 will not let me copy them to it. When I grab a file and take it to the ext drive a "cannot copy slash" appears and it does not copy it. It will not let me make folders either. So I hooked the drive to my XP and it let me create the folders. What's going on? Hope someone can give me some help...

Because your external drive is formatted to NTFS which is a Windows (Microsoft) proprietary file system. Your Mac can read but not write to the drive. In order to write to the drive you will need a third party driver such as Paragon NTFS.

@ OP If you were going to only use the drive with your Mac you could reformat the drive to Mac OS Extended Journaled. If you go that route be sure to transfer your data to another drive temporarily. Reformatting will erase the datta

Chscag, You are a life saver… Thank you soooo much I never thought on the formatting at all. I've been a MS user way too long when all my kids have Macs. Didn't think of it because I was moving so much stuff from the XP over a home network that I never considered the drive as foreign!!! We are taking off for a 36 day cruise and I wanted to get all the photos backed up so if I need extra space on the Mac I could delete them. Thanks again.
Slydude: Thanks for your excellent input but I have too much Windows stuff to backup. I've got Paragon NTFS installed and it's working in the background it was a very good investment.
Thanks to you both.

No problem. Just presenting another option. I have the Paragon driver installed and use it regularly with no issues.

DISASTER! I turned on the macbook this morning and the following happened...

Sound of startup and white screen for 30-45 seconds the white screen disappeared and after 1 sec a black screen (not a blank screen you could see it was dark black) then nothing. Turned off and tried again-nothing. Turned off and disconnected the ext HD and started again... error msg "No bootable device - - insert boot disk and press any key" Wow! I was blown away! Got my flash drive (where all my security stuff is stored but my old XP saw it as a raw drive and asked me if I wanted to format it. I have been all morning trying to find the password for this forum to scream Help!!! Gussed the forum password a few minutes ago... Can I download Mac startup files through a windows machine to a flash drive and put it into the Macbook to get it going? I'm assuming it's the Paragon software that is causing the problem. When I installed it, it did not ask me anything about which drive it was for! I'm crossing my fingers that I can recover from this without loosing the drive... Please let me know soon!!
PS- It's a solid state drive.

I doubt the Paragon NTFS driver caused any problems. We've never had anyone who is using it report any problems with it. The driver will only install to Mac OS X so there is no need to specify which drive.

It sounds like your SSD has failed. Sudden failures of hard drives are not unusual, the same goes for an SSD. To answer your question, you can not download the recovery installation on a flash drive with Windows. It has to be done on a Mac.

Have you tried booting to recovery on your machine? Hold down the command plus the r key and see if you can get into recovery. If you can get into recovery run Disk Utility from Utilities and verify the SSD. If you can't get into recovery at all, the SSD likely has failed and will probably need to be replaced. Hopefully you have been making backups.

WoW! My worst fears. Yes I have some backups but I've been putting off the Apple backup!! I can get into recovery but don't have any idea which selection to use...
Restore from time machine - I dont have backup
Reinstall OSX
Get help online
Disk utility

Any suggestions?

Sorry premature reply... I have run disk utility (on 251 GB APPLE SSD SD25...) and varified the disk and it appears to have found nothing - it says that the partition map appears to be OK. So does the Mac HD. Volume mac HD appears to be OK. But it does not advise what to do next. Info does not show anything negative but it's just a bunch of statements. Permissions differ on "Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/pt.iproj/BookmarkTitleChange.nib"; should be drwxr-xr-x; they are -rw-r--r-- .
There are hundreds of these and possibly a thousand that refer to itunes alone, all with the identical ending... "should be drwxr-xr-x; they are -rw-r--r--" What now? Please tell me I might be able to save something...

I jsust saw repair disk permissions & it is doing soas I type this... will let you know!

OK it's done and I'm running them again... and verifering the HD again and both appear to be OK. I'll restart and see what happens... It's working. Thanks very much for giving me the key to get to the solution. Guess I'd better set up the backup RIGHT NOW.
Any advice wuold be listened to very carefully...

OK, glad to hear you're up and running and yes, backup as soon as you can. You can use Time Machine with an external hard drive. The external hard drive must be formatted to the Mac OS Journaled file system. If you buy a hard drive it will likely be formatted to NTFS and must be reformatted in order to use it with your Mac for backup purposes.

Also as an aside..... the repair permission errors can all be ignored. What you saw was normal.

You'll never know what a relief it was to see the apple monogram appear on the white screen when the system booted up. Thanks for your support.
I copied everything to another drive and freed up my Seagate 1 TB ext drive. Now I want to delete everything from it and use that for my backup. Just so I don't screw it up!!! Please tell me where to go (seriously) to find out how to format it from NTFS to Apple. Haven't deleted everything yet - I could do that from the XP or when I attach it to the Mac. I'm sitting here with bated breath for your reply!!!!!

Just looked at another mac-forum (Time machine backup of existing OS on new external hard drive) and there is a discussion about time machine not being reliable all the time. CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) and Super Duper may be better… Any advice?

From my own experiences and what I have witnessed with several past TM users I would agree with them and I can highly recommend CCC for a reliable backup, and bootable clone.

But you can always use both if the backup drive is large enough. TM keeps growing and growing and ... just like the battery bunny. And CCC can do the same - if you enable its archiving feature. Sort of like a kind of TM.

I haven't had a lot of problems with Time Machine though I have seen some of the complaints about it. Mainly due to some misunderstandings about how Time Machine works. There are a few things to keep in mind with Time Machine:

1. Unless you deliberately exclude them from a backup Time Machine backs up system files, applications, and data. The Time Machine Backup is not directly bootable though. If you ever need to restore the entire contents of the drive you need to boot from the recovery partition, usb stick with the OS on it, or "clone" of your system then use Time Machine to restore the files/

2. When you are using Time Machine to backup a notebook it will store backups on your main boot drive if it cannot find the external drive you were using for backups. These gradually get removed if space is needed or as you reconnect to the external drive.

3. Some of pour members use Time Machine in conjunction with software such as Carbon Copy Cloner to provide a more complete backup strategy. One might, for example, use Carbon Copy Cloner, to periodically produce a bootable clone of the system files while allowing Time Machine to backup data files.

I need to reformat the external drive as it's NTFS now. But am unable to find instructions on how to do the formatting. I know this sounds dumb as I've formatted a lot of Microsoft drives but never an Apple… Oh yes I got CCC

Google can be your friend.

Try this:
OSX Tips: Using Disk Utility 1. Format, Erase, or Reformat a Drive

It's much more complete and up to date than some other sites.

Very interesting… That's the same site I found last night and saved to look at first thing this morning. I'll use it with much more confidence now… Thanks. I'll let you know how I make out!

I guess I'm just dumb!
I have searched everywhere for how to start Time machine and all the stuff I see is how to use it, how to set it up and what not to do with it. But nothing about where the "start" icon is!!! Same with Time Machine. CCC is installed and the ext drive has been formatted for Apple.
Where are the magic buttons…. PLEASE!!!!

Have you already selected the disk you want Time machine to use? If so, I think Time Machine starts automatically after a few minutes delay. If it doesn't, try the following it should place an icon in the menu bar somewhere near the right corner depending upon how many icons are there.

1. Open System Preferences (from the Dock or the Apple Menu)
2. Select the Time Machine preference pane
3. near the bottom of the pane is an option to "Show Time Machine in the Menu Bar"

Now you can choose "Back Up Now" from the icon in the menu bar.

Thanks Slydude. Time machine has already done two backups 941GB on the 1GB drive and it's scheduled to do the next in half an hour. I checked the "Show Time Machine on menu bar" but it does not show up. Apparently it does not require me to tick or do anything to start it backing up. That's what had me wondering how the **** to I say go!!!! I'm fine I purchased CCC but will not have time to get it going before we leave on a five week trip. The computer is going but not the backup. At least if anything goes wrong I'll have the backup when I return.
I tried to get the backup drive to be a start up drive in case things go wrong but don't know if it did that or not. Too rushed now to worry about it I'm crossing my fingers… Thanks again… Fred