Transferring Data by USB from Windows to Mac - Permissions Issues

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Hi Everyone,

I am enjoying my macbook pro but its giving me headaches as i am new to mac.

I am trying to switch my data from an external HD to my Mac HD. I can copy it but I cant delete files on the external HD.

I have looked at permissions and even though I am set as admin. The permissions for the external HD are read only. They are dimmed out so I cant change them at all.

So I looked at my mac HD it says read & Write although this is dimmed out too. It also says something like administrator and below that is says system.

I have no idea about this one?

so far my mac experience has been good if a little confusing. I hope the forum can open my eyes a little.:bone:
 
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Mac Studio, M1 Max, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD
I would guess that the hard drive is formatted for NTFS? Mac OS X can read this format but it can't write (or delete) it. Could this be the cause?
 
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Thanks for the speedy response!

Just checked and it is NTFS so now how can make it compatible for my mac and pc? Ive got a lot of stuff on there. could I just convert it to something? or would I need to reformat.

Thanks for your help:dive:
 
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The best solution is to (a) reformat the drive for HFS+ (the native Mac format) and then (b) get the MacDrive HFS+ driver for Windows (see: http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6). It costs about $50.00 and seems well worth it.

If you are feeling a little more adventurous, and are looking for a free solution, you can settle on the Linux standard format ext2. Free support is available for both Mac and Windows. Here are the links:

Mac ext2: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx

Windows ext2: http://www.fs-driver.org

I have used the Windows support myself, on a dual boot Windows/Linux system and can vouch for it. I have not yet played with the Mac support.
 
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Or you could just copy all the data off the external drive to your Mac, then format it to FAT32, that way you can read/write from Windows and Mac OS X
 

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