Transferring files from my desktop

Hi All,

This might sound like a really stupid question , ( I am from the old school windows systems ), I have just got myself a Mac and have a quick question . I copied a lot of movies from a external drive onto my desktop in order to copy them again to my external hard drive . Problem is that they copied fine to my desktop , but when I try and drag and drop them into my external drive folder it wont let me do it ? Is there a simple fix for this ? P.S. These are movies that I am transferring between my hard drives . Thanks

Welcome to the Forums, Robbie. Good to have you with us.

There is no such thing as a stupid question, so relax.

The best way to transfer data between External Hard Drives (EHDs), is to have both mounted directly into your mac, open Finder, highlight the files/videos/whatever and drag them directly from EHD 1 to EHD 2. No need to use Desktop.

In fact, if I may diverge, try not to keep anything on your Desktop beyond the icons associated with your Mac's Internal HD and any EHDs attached. The Desktop refreshes itself from time to time and files, folders, projects can occasionally get corrupted or lost. Moreover, they slow down your Mac.

And as you are new to Macs, permit me, if you will, to advise you to have a backup plan. Time Machine is a minimum.

Enjoy your new "toy" and keep in touch with the Forums. You can learn a lot from the problems of others.

Ian

Quick question: how are the drives formatted? HFS, FAT32, NTFS?

cradom said:

Quick question: how are the drives formatted? HFS, FAT32, NTFS?

Click to expand...

@ Robbie.... - hello & welcome to the forum! Expanding on Craig's question above - see the quote below briefly describing the common drive formats - the main issue is whether one of your drives might be formatted as FAT32 - if so, there is a 4GB file size limitation (movie size can be quite variable, mainly depending on the quality & length of the film); also, notice that writing between different formats can be an issue - Dave

Hard Drive File Systems

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System), a.k.a. Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
File system used by Mac OS and needed for Time Machine
Windows requires additional software to use the Mac OS

NTFS (Windows NT File System)
Read/Write NTFS from native Windows
Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
OS X needs additional software for interaction

FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS
Maximum file size: 4GB
You can use this format if you share the drive between Mac OS X and Windows computers and have no files larger than 4GB

Click to expand...

Well done, Craig and Dave. I must admit that I got it quite wrong. Assumed 2 EHDs, copying from one to the other (must read the posts better!!) And assumed both (or even one) was Mac formatted. Now obvious, I guess the OP was transferring videos from a Windows source to his Mac. That bit would be okay, but not the reverse. Good catch.

Ian

And then of course there's that OS X PITA "P" thing that can often interfere — Permissions!! Including the volumes or files/folders. A Get Info can help here.

The symptoms the OP describes would seem to suggest that he is trying to copy the files onto an NTFS-formatted drive, which of course can't be written to in OS X without third-party help.

Reformat the drive for Mac (or get Paragon NTFS to allow writing as well as reading of NTFS drives) and everything should work as expected.