Iomega external drive

First off, happy to be here.

Just bought my first MAC last Saturday. With the short week and Thanksgiving I'm a little behind in learning how to do things.

My first question is that the Iomega external drive which I used for backups on Windows and which I'll use for Time Machine doesn't let me delete any files from it. I can add files to the drive but I can't delete anything from it?

Thoughts?

Thanks!!

Same problem here - ended up using it on my kids window machine - Im not sure if they just are not compatible with the MAC or what. I look forward to someone with some knowledge answering your question

Hello, this is a popular question for switchers. The external drive you have is probably formatted in NTFS which is used by Windows XP and above. Mac OS X can only read files (view and open files) from a NTFS formatted disk.

You'll have to reformat the disk in either FAT32 or HFS+.

*If you have files in the drive you would like to keep, copy all the files to the desktop beforehand.

1. Open the Disk Utility application from "Applications\Utilities\" folder.

2. You should see the external drive in the left pane and select it. If not, quite the application and replug the drive and try again.

3. Click on the "Erase" tab.

4. In the "Format" drop-down menu, either select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" or "MS-DOS (FAT)".
*Some info before you choose, if you're planning on using the external drive exclusively on the Mac, go ahead and use "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." If you plan on using the external drive on both Mac and Windows systems select "MS-DOS (FAT)," but PLEASE remember FAT has a 4GB file limitation! This means all your files are required to be under 4GB otherwise you will receive an error!

5. Name the drive and click "Erase..."

Your drive should be formatted and ready to be used by the system! Hope this answers your question.