Downloading Videos to My Toshiba External Hard Drive

I can't seem to download videos from my Mac to my external Toshiba hard drive. It is possible to move videos from my external hard drive to my Mac. What do I need to do?

We need a bit more information. What is the model of your mac, year, version of OS X. What is the formatting of your Toshiba hard drive - it needs to be one compatible with your mac.

Yes it is possible to move movies from the external drive to the Mac. If the Mac will mount the drive it will let you move files. But if the external is formatted as NTFS you will only be able to read and move files not write to the drive. To fix that you need to re-format the drive as either FAT32, extFAT or Mac OS Extended.

If you want the Toshiba to work with a PC also pick Fat32 or extFAT. You can purchase a program to run on your mac that will read and write to NTFS formatted drives and there are options using Terminal commands but that may be a bit more than you really want to do.

Lisa

lclev said:

... there are options using Terminal commands but that may be a bit more than you really want to do....

Lisa

Click to expand...

Hi Lisa,

What are the options for using Terminal commands? Would you share them?

Thanks very much and best regards,

Peter B.

Also, moving files from a computer to an external drive is not "downloading". It's copying.
Downloading is receiving files through your internet connection onto your computer.

mb300e said:

Hi Lisa,

What are the options for using Terminal commands? Would you share them?

Thanks very much and best regards,

Peter B.

Click to expand...

Craig (cradom) can give you way more information on terminal commands. I am very rusty and I learned them when I was messing with Linux which has very similar commands to OS X's terminal commands but I am no expert.

And terminal commands are really is not the way you want to go. The problem is the file format system not how you move them.

If your drives are already formatted NTFS and you do not want to reformat them Paragon is an app that will allow you to work with NTFS drives on a mac:

Paragon NTFS for Mac® - First NTFS driver for OS X Yosemite - Overview

It cost $20 but if you will be working with NTFS formats this is the way to go.

Lisa

lclev said:

Craig (cradom) can give you way more information on terminal commands. I am very rusty and I learned them when I was messing with Linux which has very similar commands to OS X's terminal commands but I am no expert.

And terminal commands are really is not the way you want to go. The problem is the file format system not how you move them.

If your drives are already formatted NTFS and you do not want to reformat them Paragon is an app that will allow you to work with NTFS drives on a mac:

Paragon NTFS for Mac® - First NTFS driver for OS X Yosemite - Overview

It cost $20 but if you will be working with NTFS formats this is the way to go.

Lisa

Click to expand...

Thanks Lisa for the info. I will check out the Paragon software and see if it will do what I hope it will do. Unfortunately I am well entrenched and have so much invested in the world of PCs, that for the foreseeable future I have to live with NTFS format files etc. My network has 6 networked machines (PCs and Latops + my Mac Pro) plus a stack of large external drives.

As pieces become obsolete or die, they will be replaced with OS X gear but I don't see this happening overnight. So I have to make MS and OS X stuff co-exist happily.

Peter B.

If you are going to be working with NTFS drives for some times or fairly regularly the Paragon driver is the way best way to go in my opinion. I haven't checked recently but in some earlier versions of the OS using the Terminal commands resulted in drive/data corruption. Same goes with most of the free/shareware option some of which have not been updated in some time.

If you only need to read NTFS drives on the Mac you don't need to make any changes OS x does that right out of the box. The change only needs to be made icy uo need write access to NTFS drives on the Mac.

Do you have a server? Just wondering because a server makes all formats work together. I read and write to window server drives all the time. If I had to I could attach the USB NTFS drive to one of the servers, set it up to share and move, read, or write to it with my macs.

Just a thought flowing through my head - had my coffee which helps!

Lisa

lclev said:

Do you have a server? Just wondering because a server makes all formats work together. I read and write to window server drives all the time. If I had to I could attach the USB NTFS drive to one of the servers, set it up to share and move, read, or write to it with my macs.

Just a thought flowing through my head - had my coffee which helps!

Lisa

Click to expand...

An interesting point about a server. Right now I do not have one, but my Mac Pro 5,1 was originally built as a server with OS X 10.6 server software. However it is now running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2. I should think seriously about aquiring a sister for it configured as a server. I could install 4 x 4 TB drives in it, assuming the reliability of 4 TB drives improves. I am watching them closely and recently acquired a Seagate 4 TB external for $99 and am hoping that the price is not a reflection of it's quality.

I have had god luck with Seagate, Toshiba and WD drives, although I did have two 2.5 inchToshiba's crash and burn last year...bummer, but every thing was backed up so all that went down the loo was two drives, figuratively speaking. I am using them as paperweights right now.

Peter B.

lclev said:

If your drives are already formatted NTFS and you do not want to reformat them Paragon is an app that will allow you to work with NTFS drives on a mac:

Paragon NTFS for Mac® - First NTFS driver for OS X Yosemite - Overview

It cost $20 but if you will be working with NTFS formats this is the way to go.

Lisa

Click to expand...

Hi Lisa, I looked at the Paragon site, in particular the 2-in-1 Mac Bundle. Do you know if they can be installed on more than one PC and Mac? I would like to use the Mac one on my Mac Pro, and the Windows one on at least one desktop and two laptops.

I e-mailed them about this, but may not get an answer until next week.

Peter B.

I can't answer the questions about about the licensing of the paragon software. I have never had the issue arise.

As for the server issue. Are you aware you can install OS X server with Yosemite. It actually runs with in Yosemite. Cost is $19.99. It is a very light version of server software. I have played with it a bit on a MB Pro. You can actually run other apps on the mac while the server runs in the background. I haven't really played with how that affect file transfer with NTFS drives though. If you are interested and want to wait, I can play with it when I get to work and see what happens....

Lisa

lclev said:

I can't answer the questions about about the licensing of the paragon software. I have never had the issue arise.

As for the server issue.... Are you aware you can install OS X server with Yosemite. If you are interested and want to wait, I can play with it when I get to work and see what happens....

Lisa

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Hi Lisa,

I was not aware that it would run with Yosemite, the price is right too. Let me know how it goes when you give it a whirl. This could be very useful for me.

Thanks very much for you help.;D

Peter B.

I can't test this at the moment because none of my current drives are NTFS that if they are connected to Time Capsules, Airport Extremes, or other routers that support having drives attached they behave as if they were attached to a server. That might be another option if you already have the gear (appropriate router).

Slydude said:

I can't test this at the moment because none of my current drives are NTFS that if they are connected to Time Capsules, Airport Extremes, or other routers that support having drives attached they behave as if they were attached to a server. That might be another option if you already have the gear (appropriate router).

Click to expand...

Thanks Dude, now I have several options to consider. For the short term I think the Paragon software will fit the bill. They have a 2-in1 deal with software for Mac and Windows at about $29. But it only comes with one license. They have multi license versions available for individual software but not the 2-in-1. I have e-mailed them about this, but will have to wait for the answer.

Peter B.

I just performed an experiment. I took one of my many old and used NTFS HDs and connected it to my Mac Pro via USB and reformatted it as exFAT. I copied a few Word and Excel files to it just to prove that I could edit them and save them back to the drive. All worked OK.

Then I copied a folder from my Mac Pro to the drive; the folder had 18 GB of video files in it. It took just over 6 minutes. Not too shabby yes? See picture.

I am still looking to use the Paragon solution until something (if anything) better come along.

Peter B.

We highjacked the OP's original post, but we answered his question too.

If you had said you could reformat I would have told you that extFAT is an option. I capture video live every Sunday on a 2009 Macbook (Yosemite) to a USB drive formatted extFAT then move it to a Windows 7 editor where I create a TV version, web version, sales version and audio only version.

Lisa

As I might have mentioned earlier, I recently purchased a 4TB Samsung external drive. Today I took it out of the box and hooked it up to the Mac Pro. The Mac recognized it right away, so I spent a little time browsing the software that was included on the drive.

I expected there would be backup software and there was, but was I surprised when I opened a folder name Macintosh Driver...there was copy of the Paragon NTFS for Mac dmg file. So naturally I installed it.

Now all I have to do is to copy some files off one of my Windows machines and see if the driver does what it says it will do.

Watch this space for further bulletins...

Peter B.

lclev said:

If you had said you could reformat I would have told you that extFAT is an option. I capture video live every Sunday on a 2009 Macbook (Yosemite) to a USB drive formatted extFAT then move it to a Windows 7 editor where I create a TV version, web version, sales version and audio only version.

Lisa

Click to expand...

Hi Lisa,

Until this morning, I did not even know how to do formatting on a Mac, now I do. I have only had the Mac Pro for a few weeks, so I am still learning. But I am taking notes as I go; the grey matter is not what it used to be when I was operating and engineering Nuclear Power plants (50 years). You might forget, I might forget, but a piece of paper never forgets.

In the Nuke business the process of learning, training and retraining was almost a continuous process. Now that I don't do that anymore, the modus goes rusty. But it is nice to be challenged again.

Best regards,

Peter B.

mb300e said:

Hi Lisa,

Until this morning, I did not even know how to do formatting on a Mac, now I do. I have only had the Mac Pro for a few weeks, so I am still learning. But I am taking notes as I go; the grey matter is not what it used to be when I was operating and engineering Nuclear Power plants (50 years). You might forget, I might forget, but a piece of paper never forgets.

In the Nuke business the process of learning, training and retraining was almost a continuous process. Now that I don't do that anymore, the modus goes rusty. But it is nice to be challenged again.

Best regards,

Peter B.

Click to expand...

Hey, no problem! I guess I got it into my head you had drives that could not be reformatted. My bad. Ask away and we will help all we can.

And if you want to compare failing grey matter.... I am a retired after 30 years high school vocational teacher. I embrace my part-timers..... and sticky notes! ;D

Lisa