Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Can't put stuff from hardrive to mac

Sep 8, 2012 4:47AM PDT

Hey im just gettin used to my new mac. And i have a lot of downloaded movies on it. And i wanted to get it on to my external hard drive. But i found out i can onli put stuff from my hard drive to the macbook. not the other way around. i cant put files from my mac to my hard drive. Please help. Sad

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Re: copying files to external hard disk
Sep 8, 2012 4:59AM PDT

- How big are those files?
- In what filesystem is the (partition on) the hard disk formatted?
- What error message do you get?

Kees

- Collapse -
Answer
What's the betting that your external hard drive was
Sep 8, 2012 9:26AM PDT

previously used with a Windows machine?

If the answer is "yes it was", then there is a distinct possibility that it is formatted as NTFS, standard for Windows, and as such is readable by the Mac but not writable.

Which means that you can see what is on the external drive and copy it to your Mac but you cannot go the other way.
To get around this, you have a couple of choices.
1. Reformat the external as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) Standard for Mac
2. Download a copy of NTFS for Mac (Not Free)
3. Download a copy of NTFD-3G for Mac (Free)

Using any of those choices will enable your Mac to Read and Write to a disk that is formatted as NTFS

P