HDD problems

RustProofCorn

RustProofCorn


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new mac user here and i'm having trouble with a old laptop battery. i have a 120 gig laptop drive from my old laptop that i was going to use as an external drive until i have some funds to buy a bigger one. when i connect the drive to my mac i can see all the files just fine but when i try to delete files or edit them it says i am not able to do that. is there a way that i can get permissions or something to do this?

on a side questions on my new mac it is all silver except were the hinge is its black. is that black part plastic? just wondering..


Thank you in advance..
 
chscag

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Your old notebook drive is more than likley formatted to NTFS. While OS X can read NTFS formatted drives, it can not by default write to them. Which means of course you can not edit nor delete them.

You didn't give us any info about your machine or which version of OS X you have. You stated you're a new Mac user so I'm going to assume you have a new Mac and are using Snow Leopard as the OS....

Snow Leopard has the ability to write to NTFS formatted drives but that ability is not turned on by default. You have to manually turn it on. It can be done by using the terminal (command line) or with a free utility.

NTFSMounter

If you're not using Snow Leopard, post back for more suggestions.

Regards.
 
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RustProofCorn

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Thank you for your fast response chscag. you are correct that this drive is NTFS. you would also be correct in your assumption that i am running snow leopard. i have downloaded NTFSMounter and i am just going to try and copy the files i want. but another questions i was wondering is can mac os read and write a hdd formatted fat32? i would like to use this drive in conjunction with my ps3 which will only read fat32. if the mac can read fat32 can it reformatt this 120 gig drive once i get all the stuff off i want?
 
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Yes, Macs can read and write natively to FAT32.

Yes, you could reformat your drive to FAT32 and use it in conjunction with the PS3.
 
dtravis7

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As Chas stated, FAT32 is does both Read and Write on OSX.

Just one warning though which might not affect you. FAT32 has a Single File limit of 4GB. Any file larger than that will not write to a FAT32 drive. Not an issue with OSX BTW, it's the FAT32 file system. Only time it would be an issue is say a single HD video that was over 4gb. Few other single files are that large.

I hope that makes sense to you.
 
dtravis7

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Normally there are 4-6 more showing. This is mine right at the moment. The Airport Icon up by the clock.

Picture 1.jpg
 
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RustProofCorn

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thank you both of you. dtravis yeah i was aware of the 4gig limit i have another 1tb drive i formatted to fat32 and found out about the limitations at that time. so i would like to use a different format but to be able to use the drive on a ps3 i have to use fat32.

on another note whilst transferring the files from the external drive to my mac the mac froze up and was beeping. like beep..beep..beep.beep... is there a log i can look at to see what happened? i had to hold the power button down to get it to shut off.

one more thing is can i use disk utility to format to fat32 or a 3rd party program? thanks
 
TechieJustin

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chscag said:
Your old notebook drive is more than likley formatted to NTFS. While OS X can read NTFS formatted drives, it can not by default write to them. Which means of course you can not edit nor delete them.

You didn't give us any info about your machine or which version of OS X you have. You stated you're a new Mac user so I'm going to assume you have a new Mac and are using Snow Leopard as the OS....

Snow Leopard has the ability to write to NTFS formatted drives but that ability is not turned on by default. You have to manually turn it on. It can be done by using the terminal (command line) or with a free utility.

NTFSMounter

If you're not using Snow Leopard, post back for more suggestions.

Regards.
Click to expand...

Is that better than ntfs-3g?
I broke down and installed ntfs-3g because every file I wrote to an NTFS volume had its security settings set to admin only when I got to the Windows 7 machine.
 
chscag

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on another note whilst transferring the files from the external drive to my mac the mac froze up and was beeping. like beep..beep..beep.beep... is there a log i can look at to see what happened? i had to hold the power button down to get it to shut off.

one more thing is can i use disk utility to format to fat32 or a 3rd party program? thanks
Click to expand...

You can take a look in the system logs: Applications -> Utilities -> Console.app

And yes, you can use Disk Utility to format the drive to FAT-32.

Regards.
 
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RustProofCorn

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everything worked perfect. loads on my ps3 just like i wanted. btw when i was going to format to fat32 with windows it took me like 3 days because windows will only format like 32gigs of space to fat32 so i had to find a 3rd party program which wasn't easy. So go Mac! i am still curious about the black strip at the back of my mac book. is it plastic or metal? if plastic are there any reports of cracking? if so any way i can prevent it?
 
dtravis7

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I figured you were going to use OSX for the FAT32 format so did not mention XP or Vista's limit. Glad you got it all working.
 
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RustProofCorn said:
i am still curious about the black strip at the back of my mac book. is it plastic or metal? if plastic are there any reports of cracking? if so any way i can prevent it?
Click to expand...
I believe it's plastic. I haven't heard of any reports of it cracking.
 

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