Cannot copy files to Iomega 500 GB external hard drive.

The drive may be set to read only - right click on the drive and select properties and check to see if read only is checked, if it is, uncheck it. hope this helps

Yes all external drives can be formatted but formatting will always wipe off everything on it. If you want to format it you can right click on it when it appears in Windows Explorer. You are usually offered the choice of file system FAT or NTFS. FAT is limited to a file size of about 4 GB, so usually choose NTFS, I am presuming you are talking Windows system. Then you would have to copy your files to it once again.

Restart in safe mode (F8 on boot) and try it.

You plug it in the USB, wait for it to be detected and to appear in My Computer then you just manually copy all your personal files to it.

The "BEST" way to use any "external" device is to create one MORE copy of all your important files. If your MacBook dies, you have a copy of your files.
Or, if the external device dies, your MacBook still has a copy of your files. Safe!

The "WORST" way would be to copy your files to it *AND* delete the files from your Macbook,
and then to have the external device "die", killing the ONLY copy of your files. Ouch!

right click the drive you want to copy
click copy
open your lomega hard drive
right click....click paste
or
right click the file you want to copy
click send to
click the name of your lomega hard drive

Bet the drive is toast. Get the correct software and do diagnostics on drive to confirm

The boot info is bad. If there is info that is needed you will have to use a recovery program like getdataback fat 32 and getdatabackntfs

Format your hardrive for Mac OS:
Go to Disk Utilities under the go menu in your finder. Select the external drive and click on the erase tab. Clikc erase again and it formats the drive. You can now copy files onto the drive.

The default format for the IOMega drive is FAT32. This format will work on all versions of Windows, as well as Mac OS9 and above. Unfortunately, FAT32 can't handle files larger than 4gigs. If you want to use larger files, you're going to have to remove all the files from your IOMega drive and use your computer to format it to NTFS (Windows 2000/XP/Vista) or HFS+ (Mac OS9/X).

Consult your owner's manual for specific details.